For Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the creation of a “State of Palestine” in the territories Israel freed in 1967 is just one stage towards the ultimate goal of destroying Israel.

While the international community would often like to believe that forcing Israel to relinquish Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem (Israel completely left Gaza in 2005) will bring about the long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace, the truth is that the Palestinian leadership is not interested in peace with Israel. Rather, the Palestinian leadership actively seeks Israel’s destruction.

As Palestinian Media Watch has shown, the Palestinian Authority (PA), the PLO, and the Palestinian leadership constantly claim that Israel has no right to exist. These claims are reinforced by repetitive messaging and thousands of maps of “Palestine” that erase any recognition of Israel’s existence. It is the Palestinian leadership’s refusal to accept the existence of Israel (in any borders) that has brought the Palestinians to repeatedly reject every Israeli offer to secure a long-lasting peace. Those offers included the 2008 offer of then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to create a Palestinian state on an area larger than the combined areas of Gaza, Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem prior to 1967.

To understand the Palestinian position, it is important to appreciate that this reality is not a passing phase, but rather, has been official Palestinian policy for decades.

While the Palestinian leadership takes great pains to conceal its true goals, occasionally the truth slips out.

PA President Abbas was recently criticized for having put too much faith in US administrations. Deflecting the criticism, Fatah Revolutionary Council member and regular columnist for the official PA daily — Muwaffaq Matar — came to Abbas’ defense.

According to Matar, if the Palestinians were to read the speeches of Abbas, they would realize that his goal is to free every inch of the “[Palestinian] land” — including all of Israel, through “the policy of stages” — a reference to the PLO’s “10 Point Program” or “Stages Program” as seen below:

“If they would read with a desire, perhaps they will understand the consequences and the goals of President Mahmoud Abbas in focusing on two parallel paths of the Palestinian national struggle: the first is on the ground, on the land of Palestine, through peaceful popular resistance with all its meanings, demands, and methods. The second is the legal, political, and diplomatic [path] in the international forums, which will establish Palestine on the world map geographically, and will establish it in international law…

The long-term vision of the leader of the national liberation movement, Mahmoud Abbas – its gist is to wrest the Palestinian people’s historical and natural right from the colonialist states, which committed the worst crime in the history of humanity: establishing their front base (Israel) [parentheses in source] …

We are fighting to wrest free and liberate every inch of our land from the colonialist states’ proxy (Israel) [parentheses in source] through the policy of stages, as the oppressive colonialist states, which committed the worst crime against humanity in modern history, stole the Palestinian people’s historical and natural right in stages.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 26, 2022 — emphasis added]

Adopted by the PLO’s governing body (the Palestine National Council) in 1974, the “10 Point Program” or “Stages Program” is not only still relevant today, but still seen as the guiding ideology of Abbas and the PLO that together dominate the PA.

According to the program, the PLO is committed to “establish the independent combatant national authority for the people over every part of Palestinian territory that is liberated” (paragraph 2). The PLO-created entity will then “strive to achieve a union of the confrontation countries, with the aim of completing the liberation of all Palestinian territory” (paragraph 8). To achieve its goal, the PLO will “employ all means, and first and foremost armed struggle” (paragraph 2). For the PLO, “Any step taken towards liberation is a step towards the realization of the Liberation Organization’s strategy” (paragraph 4). Nonetheless, the PLO will “struggle against any proposal for a Palestinian entity the price of which is recognition, peace, secure frontiers, renunciation of national rights and the deprival of our people of their right to return and their right to self-determination on the soil of their homeland” (paragraph 3).

In this context, the most relevant provision of the program is paragraph 4, which provides:

Any step taken towards liberation is a step towards the realization of the Liberation Organization’s strategy of establishing the democratic Palestinian state specified in the resolutions of previous Palestinian National Councils.

[PLO “10-point program,” June 9, 1974, as published on the website of the UN]

While unusual, columnist Matar’s reference to the PLO program is nothing new.

Already in 1994, just months after the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian “Declaration of Principles,” Yasser Arafat made clear that in his eyes, the agreements were nothing more than a Trojan horse. He made this clear by equating the agreement to the treaty signed by Islam’s Prophet Muhammad with his enemies in Mecca. The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah called for peace for at least 10 years, but after two years, Muhammad broke the truce and attacked and conquered his enemies:

This agreement, I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our Prophet Muhammad and Quraish, and you remember the Caliph Omar had refused this agreement and considered it “Sulha Dania” [a despicable truce]. But Muhammad had accepted it and we are accepting now this [Oslo] peace accord.”

[Audio recording of Arafat speech in Johannesburg, May 10, 1994]

Othman Abu Gharbiah, then Arafat’s aide for Political Guidance and national affairs, and Director-General for National Affairs was more explicit:

The goal of this stage is the establishment of the independent Palestinian State, with its capital in Jerusalem. … Every Palestinian must know clearly and unequivocally that the independent Palestinian State, with Jerusalem as its capital, is not the end of the road. The Palestinian State is a stage after which there will be another stage, and that is the democratic state in all of Palestine [i.e. replacing Israel].”

[Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 25, 1999 — emphasis added]

The idea was again repeated by the late Faisal Husseini, PA Representative for Jerusalem Affairs, in 2001:

The Oslo agreement, or any other agreement, is just a temporary procedure, or just a step towards something bigger … We distinguish the strategic, long-term goals from the political staged goals, which we are compelled to temporarily accept due to international pressure. … [Palestine] according to the higher strategy [is]: ‘from the river to the sea.’ Palestine in its entirety is an Arab land, the land of the Arab nation.

[Al-Arabi‘ (Egypt), June 24, 2001 — emphasis added]

In 2013, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Abbas’ advisor on religious and Islamic affairs, and Chairman of the Supreme Council for Shari’ah Justice, repeated Arafat’s analogy between the Oslo Accords and the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah:

The Palestinian leadership’s sense of responsibility towards its nation made it take political steps [the Oslo Accords] about 20 years ago [1993] … exactly like the Prophet [Muhammad] did in the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah … The Prophet said: “I’m the Messenger of Allah and I will not disobey Him.” This is not disobedience, it is politics … In less than two years, the Prophet returned and based on this treaty, he conquered Mecca. This is the example, this is the model.

[Official PA TV, July 19, 2013]

While the US initiated Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations (2013-2014), under the auspices of former US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, were under way, senior Palestinian official Abbas Zaki said the Palestinians will only agree to a treaty with Israel if the Palestinian state is established on the 1967 lines. However, he stressed that ’67 lines would only be the beginning. After that, the Palestinians will continue with the stages plan:

Even the most extreme among us, Hamas, or the fighting forces, want a state within the ’67 borders. Afterward, we [will] have something to say, because the inspiring idea cannot be achieved all at once. [Rather] in stages.”

[Official Syrian Satellite TV Channel, Dec. 23, 2013]

Two years prior, in 2011, Zaki also mentioned this PA stages plan and referred to “the inspiring idea,” explaining that it means the end of Israel. He said that Abbas shares the goal of eliminating Israel in stages, but that the PA says it only wants a state along the 1967 borders because it is unacceptable politically to say you want to destroy Israel:

The agreement is based on the borders of June 4 [1967]. While the agreement is on the borders of June 4, the President [Mahmoud Abbas] understands, we understand, and everyone knows that it is impossible to realize the inspiring idea, or the great goal in one stroke. If Israel withdraws from Jerusalem, if Israel uproots the settlements, 650,000 settlers, if Israel removes the (security) fence — what will be with Israel? Israel will come to an end. If I say that I want to remove it from existence, this will be great, great, [but] it is hard. This is not a [stated] policy. You can’t say it to the world. You can say it to yourself.

[Al-Jazeera TV, Sept. 23, 2011 — emphasis added]

The stages program is not only the policy of the PLO/PA/Fatah, but it is also widely accepted by the Palestinian people. In a 2014 survey conducted for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 62.5% of those surveyed supported the assertion that if the Palestinian leadership were to negotiate a two-state solution with Israel, “that would be part of a ‘program of stages’ to liberate all of historic Palestine later” — and 63.2% of those surveyed supported the assertion that if the Palestinian leadership were to negotiate a two-state solution with Israel, “resistance should continue until all of historic Palestine is liberated” (in other words, until all of Israel is eliminated).

Lt. Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, Adv. is the Head of Legal Strategies for Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.

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