This is the Text of the Palestinian Declaration of Independence that is now circulating around the Web.
To sign the petition please go to www.petitiononline.com/Horriyeh/petition.html and add your name to the list.

In Petition , Jerusalem July 4th 2001
The Unanimous Declaration of the Palestinian People

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of the Palestinian People ; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand to alter their former Systems of Government.

The history of the present State of Israel is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over our Palestinian People and the Occupied Territories.

To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Israel has refused her Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

Israel has forbidden her Officials to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till her Assent should be obtained, and when so suspended, she has utterly neglected to attend to them.

Israel has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large illegally occupied districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in a Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

Israel has refused Representation for the Palestinian People thus invading on the natural rights of the people to have equal representation.

Israel has endeavoured to prevent the population of Palestine; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others except Jews to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

Israel has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing her Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers for the Palestinian People.

Israel made Judges dependent on her Will alone,for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. They produce Justice only for the Israelis and not for the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories

Israel has made the Judiicary the servant of the Jewish state alone and prevented the extention of the gaze of equality in the eyes of Israeli law from reaching the Palestinian People. For the People of the Occupied Territorities the law is blind.

Israel has erected a multitude of New Illegal Settlements, and sent hither swarms of settlers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

Israel has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies, without our consent.

Israel has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

Israel has subjected us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving her Assent to Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these Occupied Territories:

For cutting off our Peoples and our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us away from our territories for pretended offences:

For abolishing our freedoms and establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Occupied Territories:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. Israel has abdicated Government here by declaring us out of her Protection and waging War against us.

Israel has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

Israel is at this time transporting large Weapons of foreign Powers to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Government of a civilized nation.

Israel has constrained our fellow Citizens through unequal representation,unfair laws and legal treatment,closed borders, curfews,collective punishments,unjust deportations, bulldozing of homes and orchards, and indiscriminate shelling and sniping all of which have caused the great suffering and the death of many of the People of these Occupied Territories.

Israel has imposed an apartheid system of governance on these Occupied Territories that is repugnant to the dignity of man and to the spirit of a fair and just State.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated Petitions to the UN have been answered only by repeated injury. Israel, a State, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Israeli brethren.

We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.

We have reminded them of the circumstances of their emigration and settlement here.

We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

They have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Palestinian People, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the authority of the good People of these Occupied Territories, solemnly publish and declare:

That these Occupied Territories of Palestine are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States;

That they should therefore be Absolved from all Allegiance to the Israeli State,

And that all political connection between them and the State of Israel is and ought to be totally dissolved;

And that as Free and Independent Territories and People, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do but of which they are presently prevented from doing by the State of Israel,

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.