Word: statement
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...P.L.O. took advantage of the uprising when its national council convened in Algiers on Nov. 12 by unilaterally declaring the existence of an independent Palestinian state. For the first time, a council statement also accepted U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which calls for withdrawal of all forces from lands occupied after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and implies a recognition of Israel. It endorsed Resolution 338 as well, urging all relevant parties to negotiate...
Still, the statement was deliberately drawn to be ambiguous enough to prevent a walkout by George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh, two of the P.L.O.'s more radical leaders. Shultz declared that the P.L.O. wording was not clear enough on Israel's existence and did not flatly rule out all forms of terrorism...
Finally, all the pressure paid off. A jaunty and jovial Arafat strode into a conference room in the Palais des Nations on Wednesday night (afternoon in Washington) to face 800 reporters. He put on his spectacles and read a statement in English. This time he accepted Resolutions 242 and 338 without coupling them with demands for Palestinian independence. He specifically named the state of Israel as having the right "to exist in peace and security." Most significantly, he declared, "We totally and absolutely renounce all forms of terrorism, including individual, group and state terrorism...
...others have regarded as a murderous terrorist. Historians will argue whether Arafat actually said them on Nov. 15 in Algiers, when the Palestine National Council declared an independent state; or on Dec. 7 in Stockholm, when the P.L.O. leader and a group of U.S. Jews issued a joint "clarifying" statement; or on Dec. 13, when Arafat delivered an impassioned appeal for peace negotiations to a special U.N. General Assembly session in Geneva. Each time the cotton in Arafat's mouth prevented the U.S. from hearing the precise syntax it wanted. But on Dec. 14, in a frantically arranged press conference...
...appearing to meet the terms of his adversaries, Arafat is maneuvering Israel, instead of the P.L.O., into the spoiler's role. Yet a crucial remaining obstacle is Arafat's old habit of surrounding every statement with as much vagueness as he can get away with. To fend off criticism or even assassination by P.L.O. hard-liners who reject any moderation, Arafat insists, he must withhold concrete concessions until he sits at a negotiating table. Accordingly, the Stockholm statement accepted the fact of Israel's existence but did not acknowledge Israel's moral "right" to statehood. Arafat also seemed to hedge...