How many more times can one beat this dead horse?

When the Palestinians reached the lowest point of their national existence, they did what the Jews had done in similar circumstances: They found solace in composing prayers of rage. The Palestinians have been expelled and scattered throughout a dozen states, their homeland divided up among Israel, Jordan and Egypt, their national identity wiped out from the face of the earth. Jews prayed, "Pour your wrath upon the goyim," and claimed that the goyim were worse than beasts. The Palestinians decided to destroy the State of Israel and to send the Jews back to where they had come from. That is how the "Palestinian Charter" was born.

I doubt whether the Palestinians have ever derived any use out of this document. Perhaps it has lifted their morale in some of their darkest moments. However, the Jews have most certainly made good use of it. This wretched Charter has been put to use as the central tool in Israeli propaganda. Every time the Palestinians complain about a new wrong done to them, the Charter is taken out of the drawer. You want to eliminate Israel, so you deserve it!

The Charter was voided de facto a mere year after its final formulation. In 1969 the PLO adopted a new platform: "The establishment of a democratic, non-denominational state, where Moslems, Christians and Jews would live in equality." This was and has remained an untenable program, but at least it expressed the premise of acceptance of Jews to stay on the land.

Throughout the years I have asked hundreds of Palestinians, among them PLO activists, to tell me what the Charter says. Often, the responses were rather amusing: Practically none of those asked knew what it actually said, and a few provided utterly fictional responses. On the other hand, the late Professor Yehoshaphat Harkavi devoted many years of his life to the propagation of this Charter, so that every Israeli child would know it by heart (until his day of revelation one Yom Kippur, when he instantly turned from a devouring hawk into a cooing dove).

When the Palestinian National Council declared in 1988, by an overwhelming majority, a Palestinian State on a portion of the land of Palestine, the Charter finally died. Dead but not buried. Which is why Israelis still imagine this horse to be alive. For Arafat it is a very lucrative deal: He keeps selling this dead horse to Israel over and over again, with Israel willing to pay a very high price for the carcass every single time.

And now it is happening once again. The dead horse seems to be wagging its tail. So instead of discussing serious political and security issues, the debate, once again, turns to the issue of abolishing the abolished Charter.

I do not know the particular circumstances in which President Clinton told Netanyahu, "You are ridiculous!" -- but I would not be surprised if it was in connection with the subject of the Charter. To placate members of his party who had not yet heard of the horse's demise, Netanyahu once again demanded that the Charter be abolished. Not by the PLO Executive Committee, nor by the PLO Central Committee, but by two-thirds of the membership of the "Palestinian National Council" in another vote. And that is truly ridiculous.

• First of all, in the world of politics, there is no custom of abolishing declarations. New declarations simply come in their place. Russia did not abolish the Communist Manifesto.

Britain did not abolish the Balfour Declaration, which assured the rights of non-Jews in Palestine. The Likud and its predecessors did not abolish the platform demanding "a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan." The U.N. did not abolish the partition resolution of 1947, according to which, among others, Ramleh and Lod belong to the Palestinian Arab state.

• Second: The "Palestinian National Council" represents all Palestinians around the world. If Israel demands that it be convened, 3 million Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan are automatically brought in, and that means the Right of Return. It would be comparable to Israel being told to convene the Zionist

Congress in order to change the Basel program.

• Third: This Council has never been elected. It was arbitrarily appointed many years ago. Every organization belonging to the PLO nominated representatives. It includes organizations serving Syria and Iraq, as well as guerilla organizations

which have long since ceased to exist. The important Islamic factions are not represented at all. It gives a significant voice to bodies once considered important, such as the Popular Front of Habash amd the Democratic Friont of Hawatmeh, which have since become far less important.

• Fourth: The opposition within the Council (including agents of Assad and Saddam Hussein) wields there much more power than it currently holds on the Palestinian street. Contrary to the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority, which was democratically elected under strict international supervision, the

Palestinian National Council is a relic of the past.

Clinton understands this. Because he wants peace and understands that only Arafat can deliver it, he sees in the Israeli demand an insufferable folly. Unless (and I think that Clinton suspects as much), the goal is precisely to prevent the abolition of the Charter and to cripple Arafat's attempts to eliminate terrorism.

Following Clinton's demand, the agreement states that members of the Palestinian National Council will be invited to a mass convention along with many others wishing to attend, Clinton would speak, and in the end, those present would express their "support" of peace and of Arafat's declaration regarding the abolition of the anti-Israeli paragraphs of the Charter.

Netanyahu signed this, but now he is disavowing it. The dead horse is still galloping around the Likud meadows. It has to be killed once again.