New Fatah charter omits call for Israel’s demise

The new Fatah charter maintains a militant tone but emphasizes democratization and omits language in earlier documents that called for Israel’s destruction.

The office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence translated the document that emerged from a Fatah council last summer, and Secrecy News, a project of the Federation of American Scientists watchdog group, obtained a copy and published it last week.

The Zionist Organization of Amer-ica and other U.S. Jewish groups have long called for Fatah, the party of the more moderate Palestinian Authority, to renounce the negationist language of earlier charters.

Such language is absent from the new charter, although it maintains a militant tone in its preamble, which says, “You must know that our enemy is strong and the battle is ferocious and long.” — jta