The New Palestinian Constitution Makes Peace Illegal

It is a threat to Israel, Europe, Christians and Jews

On February 10, Mahmoud Abbas published the draft of a new Palestinian constitution for public comment. The document was produced by a committee he appointed in August 2025, drafted over seven months with French assistance, and presented to Emmanuel Macron in Paris last November. It is being hailed as a step toward democracy and statehood.

I read all 162 articles. What I found should alarm not just Israelis, but Europeans, Christians, and anyone who believes in the possibility of Middle East peace.

Beneath a surface layer of democratic provisions — separation of powers, free elections, human rights protections — the constitution contains an interlocking architecture of provisions that, taken together, constitutionalize permanent conflict with Israel, criminalize coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, create binding obligations that cascade through international law to nearly every country on earth, and make themselves virtually impossible to repeal.

This is not a constitution for a state that wants peace. It is a legal machine for permanent war — and Europe helped build it.

It Claims All of Israel

The constitution never defines the borders of “Palestine. “ There is no reference to the 1967 lines. There is no mention of the West Bank and Gaza as the state’s territory. There is no acknowledgment that any other sovereign entity exists on any part of the land.

This is a deliberate regression. The Arafat-era 2003 draft constitution explicitly defined the territory as “an indivisible unit within its borders on the eve of June 4, 1967.” The 2026 draft dropped that language entirely.

Instead, the constitution anchors itself to the PLO National Covenant — which claims all of Mandatory Palestine — by stating that the PLO “continues to perform its national responsibilities according to the National Covenant.” Article 25 declares the constitution and the 1988 Declaration of Independence to be “a single indivisible unit.” Article 12 commits to “the unity of the land.” Article 40 references “the territory of the homeland” without any geographic limitation.

The word “occupation” appears throughout the text but is never qualified — never “the occupation of the West Bank,” never “the occupation since 1967.” It is always just “the occupation.” And the preamble characterizes it as a “colonial settlement occupation” — language that frames Israel’s very existence, not just its post-1967 presence, as illegitimate.

Israel is never mentioned by name. It is simply “the occupation.” Which means that this document agrees with Hamas that all of Israel is “occupied land.”

It Constitutionalizes “Genocide” as Fact

The preamble asserts as foundational fact — not allegation, not claim, but constitutional premise — that “genocide continue in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.”

Article 24 then creates a constitutional duty to “pursue the perpetrators of these crimes before the judiciary.” Article 69 establishes that genocide and crimes against humanity “are not subject to a statute of limitations and may not be pardoned.” And Article 156 prohibits amending fundamental rights provisions — making this entire framework permanent.

Think about what this means. If genocide is constitutionally occurring across all of Gaza and the West Bank, then every Palestinian in those territories is a victim of genocide. The state has a permanent obligation to prosecute the perpetrators — meaning Israel — forever. No future government can stop it. No pardon is possible. No statute of limitations applies.

A Palestinian leader who agreed to drop genocide prosecution as part of a peace deal would be violating his own constitution.

It Makes Peace Illegal

Any peace agreement requires defined borders — the constitution has none. It requires mutual recognition — the constitution doesn’t acknowledge Israel exists. It requires compromise on refugees — the constitution makes the right of return unamendable under Article 156. It requires ending criminal claims — the constitution mandates perpetual genocide prosecution. It requires accepting the other side’s legitimacy — the constitution frames Israel as a criminal entity.

Article 82 explicitly prohibits treaties that violate the constitution. A Palestinian Constitutional Court faithfully applying this document would be obligated to strike down any peace treaty with Israel.

This is not an unintended consequence. It is the point. The constitution converts the political positions that Palestinian leaders have always held — non-negotiable right of return, rejection of Israel’s legitimacy, claims to all of the land — and hardens them into unamendable supreme law. What was once a negotiating stance is now a constitutional straitjacket that binds all future governments.

Every Israeli Is a Target - and Europe/Canada/Australia Are The Enforcers

Israel has universal conscription. Virtually every Jewish Israeli adult is an IDF veteran. The constitution mandates prosecution of genocide perpetrators with no statute of limitations. Connect the dots: every Israeli who ever served in the IDF — as a combat soldier, a medic, a cook, a clerk, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, and probably even desk jobs in Israel — is a presumptive war criminal under this framework.

This isn’t limited to Palestinian courts. Palestine has been a member of the International Criminal Court since 2015. The constitution’s mandate to pursue perpetrators “before the judiciary” encompasses every available legal forum. The ICC has already demonstrated its willingness to issue warrants against Israeli leaders.

But now it applies to hundreds of thousands of Israelis.

The constitution creates a permanent obligation to file cases. The ICC processes them. And under Article 86 of the Rome Statute, every member state — virtually all of Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan — is legally obligated to cooperate with ICC warrants, including executing arrests.

An Israeli backpacker in Paris. A tech executive in London. A professor in Brussels. A grandmother in Toronto. If they ever served in the IDF, they are all subject to arrest by countries that are treaty-bound to enforce warrants generated by a constitutional machine that can never be switched off. And there are plenty of Israel haters who have already shown that they want to create lists of Israelis in their countries for exactly this reason, to charge them with “genocide.”

The practical burden on Rome Statute member states would be immense. Each ICC warrant must be entered into border control databases — Interpol, the EU’s Schengen Information System, and national immigration systems. Each arrest requires a domestic judicial surrender proceeding, with the detained person entitled to legal representation, a hearing, and the right to appeal. Each case demands the involvement of ministries of justice, prosecutors, courts, police, and diplomatic channels. These systems are designed to handle a few cases at a time. A constitutionally-mandated campaign generating thousands of warrant requests against citizens of a single country would overwhelm the administrative, judicial, and diplomatic infrastructure of every cooperating state. European, Canadian, and Australian governments would face a choice: allow their legal systems to be consumed by an endless stream of cases they never anticipated, or refuse to comply with their own treaty obligations — exposing themselves to legal challenges from Palestinian authorities and human rights organizations for non-compliance.

The constitution’s drafters have engineered a system in which the cost of compliance is paralysis and the cost of non-compliance is legal liability. The world has to pay the price.

The countries that recognized Palestine and helped draft this constitution would be legally obligated to enforce the consequences of what they built.

It Criminalizes Coexistence

The implications extend to every form of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. Any Israeli on Palestinian territory — which, under this constitution, means any territory — is a presumptive genocide perpetrator on Palestinian soil. This means:

Israelis driving through the West Bank to reach Jordan could be arrested in transit. Israeli tourists visiting Bethlehem or Jericho would be subject to detention. Israeli academics visiting Palestinian universities, Israeli doctors volunteering at Palestinian clinics, Israeli businesspeople meeting Palestinian partners — all of them are IDF veterans on the soil of a state constitutionally mandated to prosecute them.

The grassroots peace organizations that bring Israelis and Palestinians together — Seeds of Peace, the Parents Circle, Kids4Peace — become constitutionally untenable. An Israeli mother at a joint dialogue is a citizen of the genocide state. A Palestinian mother who meets her is normalizing relations with her people’s genocide perpetrator.

And the Palestinians who participate in these programs? They face their own constitutional jeopardy. If Israel is constitutionally a genocidal colonial entity, then cooperating with Israelis can be characterized as normalizing genocide. Article 69 punishes “conspiracy against the unity and integrity of the territory of the State of Palestine.” Article 18 frames defense of the homeland as “a sacred duty.” Palestinian academics collaborating with Israeli colleagues, Palestinian doctors training in Israeli hospitals, Palestinian workers employed by Israeli businesses, Palestinian peace activists who believe in coexistence — all of them risk being cast as traitors to a constitutional order that demands rejection of everything Israeli.

The constitution doesn’t just prevent peace between governments. It criminalizes peace between people.

It Erases Judaism and Downgrades Christianity

The 2003 Basic Law, currently in force, protects “all other heavenly religions” — a phrase that implicitly includes Judaism. The Arafat-era 2003 draft constitution explicitly guaranteed “sanctity and respect” to “Christianity and all other monotheistic religions” and protected religious worship sites for “followers of all monotheistic religions.”

The 2026 draft strips all of this away. Article 4 mentions only Christianity — and downgrades it from “sanctity and respect” to the vague formulation that it “has its status” and its followers’ “rights are respected.” Judaism is not mentioned once in the entire document, not even as a “heavenly religion.”

Which means that the Palestinian constitution would allow dismantling every synagogue and Jewish holy place in Jerusalem and elsewhere.

Article 3 protects only “Islamic and Christian sanctities” in Jerusalem. Jewish sanctities — the Western Wall, the Temple Mount, the Mount of Olives — receive no mention and no protection. The same applies to Jewish holy sites throughout the claimed territory: the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus. Under this constitution, Israeli administration of any of these sites is an illegal alteration of the land’s “character and historical identity” (Article 3). Jewish worship there takes place under the authority of an entity the constitution identifies as a genocidal occupier. And any Jews who want to visit these sites are subject to arrest and prosecution as participating in genocide.

Islamic Sharia is established as “a primary source for legislation.” Christians will live under a legal system whose primary source is the religious law of another faith, with only the vague assurance that their “rights are respected.” This is a big step backwards from previous Palestinian documents.

France — the country of laïcité — helped draft a constitution more Islamic supremacist than anything Arafat proposed.

The PLO and the State: Sovereignty Without Accountability

The Palestinian Authority has always been subordinate to the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PA handles day-to-day governance — education, health, policing, tax collection — but political decisions are made by the PLO Executive Committee, an unelected, self-perpetuating body. Mahmoud Abbas holds both positions simultaneously, as PLO Chairman and PA President, which obscures the fact that these are separate institutions with the PLO firmly on top.

The new constitution does not change this hierarchy. It formalizes it.

The constitution creates an elaborate democratic architecture: a directly elected president limited to two five-year terms, a prime minister and cabinet accountable to parliament, a House of Representatives as the sole legislative authority, an independent judiciary, and a Constitutional Court with binding authority over constitutional interpretation. Chapters III through VII read like the framework of a serious parliamentary democracy. It all sounds impressive, and it seems to be dazzling the Europeans who want to see a modern Palestinian state.

But above all of it sits the PLO, untouched.

Article 11 declares that the establishment of the state “does not diminish” the PLO’s status. The preamble specifies that the PLO retains supremacy “until the achievement of full national independence and the realization of inalienable rights, primarily the right of return“ and that it “continues to perform its national responsibilities according to the National Covenant.”

Which means that the PLO makes all the important decisions until Israel is destroyed, since Israel will never allow the “right of return.”

The constitution defines in meticulous detail who controls the state. It never defines who controls the PLO. The PLO operates under its own charter, which the state has no authority to amend. The relationship is one-directional: the constitution protects the PLO from the state, but nothing protects the state from the PLO.

The constitution also erases the legal framework that has governed Israeli-Palestinian relations for three decades. Oslo is never mentioned and the agreements that the PLO and PA made over the past 30 years are not formalized. The letters of mutual recognition are never referenced. Israel is never named. This is a deliberate regression: the 2003 Basic Law explicitly referenced “the interim self-governing arrangements resulting from the Israeli-Palestinian agreement.” The new constitution replaces that foundation entirely, grounding itself instead in the 1988 Declaration of Independence and the PLO National Covenant — documents that predate and are incompatible with mutual recognition.

Nor does the constitution renounce armed resistance. Article 154 prohibits military formations outside the state’s security forces, but Article 18 declares defense of the homeland and “the safety of its land” a “sacred duty,” and the preamble celebrates “the continuous Palestinian struggle that has never ceased” against “colonial settlement occupation.” More fundamentally, because the PLO operates under its own charter rather than under the constitution, the state’s restrictions on armed groups do not bind the PLO or its constituent factions. Fatah’s longstanding position that armed resistance remains legitimate is a PLO matter, not a state matter, and nothing in this constitution touches it.

In fact, Mahmoud Abbas told Macron in the November 2025 press conference that “we want a democratic, unarmed state committed to the rule of law, transparency, justice, pluralism and the rotation of power.” The constitution never mentions demilitarization.

The result is a structure in which Palestinians can vote for a president and a parliament, but the body that holds ultimate political authority — the body that determines the national position on borders, refugees, Jerusalem, and relations with Israel — answers to no electorate, is governed by a document that rejects Israel’s existence, has erased all prior commitments to peace, and retains the right to pursue armed struggle.

This is all a direct result of recognizing “Palestine” - and the French directly helped

Here is the timeline that European capitals do not want to discuss.

In June 2025, Abbas wrote to Macron promising reforms — condemning October 7, pledging to reform textbooks to remove hate speech, committing to demilitarize, accepting elections. Macron, satisfied, announced in July that France would recognize Palestine in September. Other European nations followed.

On August 18 — three and a half weeks after Macron’s announcement, with recognition locked in — Abbas issued the decree establishing the constitution drafting committee.

In September, France, the UK, Canada, Australia, Belgium, and others formally recognized Palestine at the UN General Assembly, launching the “Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution.”

In November, Macron hosted Abbas in Paris, announced a joint French-Palestinian committee to help finalize the constitution, and pledged €100 million in aid. Abbas told Macron he wanted “a democratic, unarmed state committed to the rule of law.”

In February 2026, the constitution was published. It mandates perpetual legal warfare against Israel, claims all the land, defines Israel as a criminal entity, erases Judaism, downgrades Christianity, and makes peace unconstitutional.

Abbas told Europe exactly what it wanted to hear. Then he drafted the opposite.

Every state that recognized “Palestine” used the reasoning that somehow this would advance a peaceful two state solution that everyone knows is the only way forward. Mahmoud Abbas smiled at them, promised reforms, and spat in their faces with a constitution that cannot ever allow peace or even co-existence with Israel.

Why This Cannot Be Fixed

The constitution is designed to be self-protecting. Article 156 prohibits amendment of fundamental rights provisions — which is exactly where the most problematic provisions are embedded. The right of return, the genocide prosecution mandate, and the criminal law framework all sit within the protected zone.

A Constitutional Court with binding authority (Article 143) enforces these provisions against all state institutions. Even a peace-seeking government with moderate judges would find that honest jurisprudence requires striking down peace measures that conflict with unamendable text.

The PLO National Covenant is incorporated by reference, and the preamble is declared inseparable from the constitution. The genocide premise — once embedded as constitutional fact — poisons every possible avenue of coexistence: you cannot negotiate, trade, share infrastructure, cooperate, or even talk with your genocide perpetrator.

The drafters didn’t accidentally create these interlocking traps. They engineered them.

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Conclusion: A Constitution for Destruction, Not Construction

The 2026 draft constitution answers a question that has defined the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades: does the Palestinian leadership want to build a state, or destroy one?

The drafting of a constitution is the moment when a national movement reveals its true purpose. It is the moment you define the territory you intend to govern, establish relations with your neighbors, create legal frameworks for economic development and foreign investment, and build institutions designed to deliver services to your citizens. A constitution is a declaration to the world: we are ready to govern.

The 2026 constitution does none of this.

It defines no territory to govern. It establishes no framework for relations with the only neighbor its economy depends on. It creates no legal basis for the thousands of commercial relationships that already exist between Palestinian and Israeli businesses. It provides no mechanism for diplomatic recognition of the state next door — or any acknowledgment that the state next door exists.

Instead, every major structural choice in the document points outward — toward Israel, toward the ICC, toward international legal warfare — rather than inward, toward the actual work of building and running a country. It constitutionalizes victimhood rather than sovereignty. It creates obligations to pursue enemies rather than serve citizens. It builds legal machinery for prosecution, not for governance. The democratic architecture is real, but it is a shell around a weapon, not a government.

The PLO superstructure is the clearest tell. When a liberation movement achieves statehood, it absorbs itself into the state’s institutions. The ANC became South Africa’s governing party within a constitutional framework. SWAPO became Namibia’s government. The state replaced the movement. This constitution does the opposite: it permanently elevates the liberation movement above the state, operating under its own unreformed charter, answerable to no electorate, and constitutionally immune from the state’s authority. That is the choice you make when the struggle is not a phase you are transitioning out of but the permanent purpose of the enterprise.

This is not a constitution for a state. It is a constitution against a state — the one next door.

Abbas told Macron he wanted “a democratic, unarmed state committed to the rule of law.” What he produced is a legal architecture for permanent war, designed to be irreversible, built with European money and diplomatic support, and aimed not at governing Palestinians but at dismantling Israel through the international legal system.

This draft constitution proves, as clearly as possible, that the Palestinians never wanted to build a state, but to destroy one.

Every government that recognized the “State of Palestine” in the hope it would bring peace should be outraged at how they have been manipulated and lied to. And they should make it clear to Mahmoud Abbas that their recognition was conditional - and since the Palestinians have spit on those conditions, the recognitions are null and void.

The full text of the Draft Constitution of the State of Palestine (February 2026), in unofficial English translation, is available at: https://constitutionnet.org/sites/default/files/2026-02/2026.02%20-%20Draft%20constitution%20%28English%29.pdf