Does the 1964 PLO Charter Exclude the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Palestine?
A note on the original PLO Charter, and what it does and does not state
It is an article of faith among Israel apologists that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) initially did not claim the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of Palestine. To this end, they regularly invoke the 1964 Palestine National Charter, adopted by the PLO at its founding meeting that year, to bolster their claims.
The purpose of such arguments seems to be that Palestinians didn’t really care about the West Bank and Gaza Strip until Israel took control of these territories in 1967, because their agenda has only ever really been about killing Jews. And if Palestinian attachment to the West Bank and Gaza Strip is essentially manufactured and the product of ulterior motives, it makes even more sense for Israel’s claims of sovereignty over these territories to be recognized.
Does the 1964 PLO Charter support the claims made on its behalf?
According to Article 2 of the 1964 PLO Charter: "Palestine with its boundaries at the time of the British Mandate is an indivisible territorial unit."
According to Article 24 of the same document: "This Organization [PLO] does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area [of Mandatory Palestine then under Syrian control]. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields."
Article 24 does not exclude the Gaza Strip, West Bank, or Himmah, all of which lay within the boundaries of the British Mandate, from the clear and concise territorial definition of Palestine provided in Article 2. Rather, Article 24 is a statement of deference to the existing Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian governance of the territories named, indicating that the PLO will not be challenging their authority over those areas.
This reflected the reality that the PLO was established by the Arab League. As a result, the 1964 Charter was drafted by delegates selected by Arab governments (primarily Egypt and Jordan) to represent their interests, rather than by Palestinians acting independently of these governments or representatives the Palestinian guerrilla organisations emerging during that same period.
None of these Palestinian organisations expressed sentiments similar to those in Article 24 of the 1964 Charter. This was clearly reflected in the 1968 Charter, largely drafted by representatives of the guerrilla movements and independents, and which doesn’t include even a faint echo of Article 24 of the 1964 document.
It is of course true that Israel had by then occupied these territories but the PLO, once it came under the control of Palestinian organisations in the wake of the 1967 June War, consistently rejected Jordan's continued claim of sovereignty over the West Bank, until the matter was finally resolved in 1988 in the PLO's favour.
No similar rivalry took place between the PLO and Egypt because Egypt never claimed sovereignty over the Gaza Strip. Under both the monarchy and republican regimes, Cairo explicitly and formally ruled Gaza as Palestinian territory. This also explains why Egypt did not demand the restoration of the Gaza Strip as part of its 1979 peace agreement with Israel.
What is also conveniently overlooked is that the 1964 Charter was in force for all of four years and became irrelevant in 1968, when it was replaced by the 1968 Palestinian National Charter, drafted by delegates who largely represented the guerrilla movement rather than Arab governments.
That 1968 Charter has now been in force for nearly six decades. There is continued debate over whether it was or was not amended in 1996 in the context of the Oslo Accords. But even if it was, it was revised rather than replaced. So it is somewhat unclear why anyone would consider the superseded 1964 Charter the more relevant version of this document. It's a bit like invoking the Three-Fifth Compromise to make the argument that African-Americans don't have voting rights in 2025.