At the conference were representatives from Palestinian communities in Jordan, West Bank, the Gaza strip, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, Egypt, Qatar, Libya, and Algeria.

In a November 1988 meeting in Algiers, the PNC approved the Palestinian Declaration of Independence[12] by a vote of 253 in favour 46 against and 10 abstentions.

After the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the PNC met in Gaza in April 1996 and voted 504 to 54 to void those parts of the Palestinian National Covenant that denied Israel's right to exist, but the charter itself has not been formally changed or re-drafted.

One of its most prominent members, the Palestinian-American scholar and activist Edward Said, left the PNC because he believed that the Oslo Accords sold short the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in pre-1967 Israel and would not lead to a lasting peace.

In December 1998, the PNC met in Gaza at the insistence of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called it a condition of the continuation of the peace process.

Clinton gave a speech to the event appealing to the PNC not to allow their grievances against Israel to stifle Palestinian progress.

[13] In 1996, when the Council had to vote on the revision of the Palestinian National Charter, the total number of PNC members was increased from 400 to about 800.

[2] For the first time in 22 years, since its last full meeting in 1996, the 700 member PNC met on 30 April 2018 in Ramallah to discuss recent developments, but many groups did not attend, including Hamas (the leading Palestinian political party), Islamic Jihad and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The PNC also filled vacancies in the PLO Executive Committee with loyalists to Palestinian president Mahmood Abbas.