Palestinian Declaration of Independence

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The Palestinian Declaration of Independence^[1] was an attempt to create a "Palestinian state" (see Proposals for a Palestinian state for other attempts). It was adopted by the Palestinian National Council, the legislative body of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), in Algiers on 15 November 1988. It unilaterally proclaimed the establishment of an 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 Palestinian territories since.

The declaration concerns the Palestine region, as defined by the British Mandate of Palestine, which includes the whole of Israel as well as the West Bank and the Gaza strip. It references the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine from 1947 (which also serves as the basis for Israel's declaration of independence) and "UN resolutions since 1947" in general.

It does not explicitly recognize the State of Israel. However, an acompanying document^[2] that explicitly mentions UN Security Council Resolution 242 and Yasser Arafat's statements in Geneva a month later were accepted by the United States as sufficient to remove the ambiguities in the declaration. Based on these statements, the declaration can be interpreted to have recognized Israel in its pre-1967 boundaries.