Palestinian Declaration of Independence

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The Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Palestinian National Council, the legislative body of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), in Algiers on 15 November 1988. It unilaterally proclaimed the establishment of a new independent state called the "State of Palestine" but at that time the PLO had no control of any territory. No de facto independent state has come into existence in the disputed territories since.

While the declaration concerns Palestine, as defined by the British Mandate of Palestine, (which includes the whole of Israel), it is generally interpreted to have recognized Israel in its pre 1967 boundaries, or was at least a major step on this path. Just as in Israel's declaration of establishment, it partly bases its claims on UN GA 181. By reference to "UN resolutions since 1947" (like SC 242) it implicitly and perhaps ambiguously restricted its immediate claims to the Palestinian territories and Jerusalem. It was accompanied by a Political Statement that clarified it somewhat and explicitly mentioned SC 242. Yasser Arafat's statements in Geneva a month later were accepted by the United States as sufficient to remove the ambiguities in the declaration.