Al Jazeera and The Guardian are jointly publishing the summary of a
treasure trove of documents revealing the extraordinary extent to which
the PA was willing to sacrifice a
huge chunk of the Palestinian national patrimony
and agenda for the sake of peace. While Israel (and to an extent, the
Bush administration) essentially said: “That’s nice. But not enough.”
This will literally knock your socks off. The documents (linked
below in discreet articles) reveal:
The scale of confidential
concessions offered by Palestinian negotiators, including on the
highly sensitive issue of the right of return of Palestinian refugees.
• How Israeli leaders privately asked for some Arab citizens to be
transferred to a new Palestinian state.
• The intimate level of covert co-operation between Israeli security
forces and the Palestinian Authority.
• The central role of British intelligence in drawing up a secret
plan to crush Hamas in the Palestinian
territories.
• How Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders were privately tipped off
about Israel’s 2008-9 war in Gaza.
As well as the annexation
of all East Jerusalem settlements except Har Homa, the Palestine
papers show PLO leaders privately suggested swapping part of the
flashpoint East Jerusalem Arab neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah for land
elsewhere.
Most controversially, they also proposed a joint committee to take
over the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City
– the neuralgic issue that helped sink the Camp David talks in 2000
after Yasser Arafat refused to concede sovereignty around the Dome of
the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques.
…The concession in May 2008 by Palestinian leaders [would have]
allow[ed] Israel to annex the settlements in East Jerusalem – including
Gilo…
You
sure don't, baby. But every other Palestinian and the world now will.
Palestinian negotiators practically bragged to the Israelis about how
much they were willing to give up for the sake of peace:
…The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb
Erekat, as giving Israel “the biggest Yerushalayim [the Hebrew
name for Jerusalem] in history”
But nothing was enough for Israel. It apologetically said it
appreciated the Palestinian sacrifice but:
…The offer was rejected out of hand by Israel because it
did not include a big settlement near the city Ma’ale Adumim as well as
Har Homa and several others deeper in the West Bank, including Ariel.
“We do not like this suggestion because it does not meet our demands,”
Israel’s then foreign minister, Tzipi
Livni, told the Palestinians, “and probably it was not easy for
you to think about it, but I really appreciate it“.
Oh and you remember all that hope liberal Zionists (and even me I
confess) harbored that Tzipi Livni offered a pragmatic alternative to
Bibi and that SHE could and would negotiate a settlement if offered
power–all smashed to bits by revelations like this. Tzipi was no better
than Olmert nor Bibi. She just talked nicer and sounded more
reasonable.
Here is the overall summary of the tone of the documents by the
Guardian reporters:
The overall impression that emerges from the documents,
which stretch from 1999 to 2010, is of the weakness and growing
desperation of PA leaders as failure to reach agreement or even halt all
settlement temporarily undermines their credibility in relation to
their Hamas rivals; the papers also reveal the unyielding confidence of
Israeli negotiators and the often dismissive attitude of US politicians
towards Palestinian representatives.
So let’s try to assess the meaning of this bombshell. The PA is
toast and
this former PLO representative says as much in this
Guardian column. Perhaps it will still retain support in the West
Bank, which is its base. But Fatah leaders were willing to give away
the store and get virtually nothing in return. What’s more, even the
huge amount it offered wasn’t enough. Israel wanted it all.
Israel had a partner all along. But it was the Palestinians who had
no partner. Israel’s motto: “Peace on our terms, or no terms.” Israel
acted as if it had won WWII and could dictate terms to the vanquished
foe. Olmert and Israelis may live to regret that they didn’t make peace
on these unbelievably generous terms.
In terms of Palestinian leadership, these papers prove the bankruptcy
of the notion that an unelected rump Palestinian entity can negotiate a
satisfactory deal on behalf of the Palestinian people. The Bush
administration and Israeli policy to torpedo the 2006 elections and
stand in the way of Hamas-Fatah reconciliation has been a disaster. The
only way to find an accomodation acceptable to the majority of
Palestinians is with a representative elected body that ratifies such
negotiation results.
If Abbas and his cronies had any honor they’d resign en masse and
leave Israel to resume full Occupation of the West Bank (or barring that
negotiate a real resolution with real Palestinian leaders). But the
current PA leaders are as survival oriented as Bibi. They show no
devotion to Palestinian national ideals just as Bibi et al show little
commitment to anything resembling values or principles. They just want
to keep their fingers in the pie. For Palestinians an increasingly
small, miserly one. For Israelis an increasingly larger and tastier
one.
And can you believe that Israel had the temerity to ask the PA to
accept forced transfer of Israeli Palestinian citizens to the new
Palestinian state, Avigdor Lieberman’s population transfer (aka
expulsion) agenda?
The documents are a boon for Hamas, which has always prided itself on
steadfastness to the Palestinian national agenda. Hamas will appear
the only Palestinian movement which hasn’t compromised with Israel, the
only one which wasn’t willing to sell its people out for a mess of
porridge. Even if you hate Hamas, you will have to admit it comes out
of this smelling like a rose. And who do we have to blame for this?
Bush and Olmert, no one else.
Olmert is shown to be a total liar when he trumpeted claims that he
made the Palestinians a
generous
offer of 92% of Palestine, which they refused. Actually, it was
Olmert who couldn’t or wouldn’t deliver.
The new development augurs poorly for any serious peace efforts by
the Obama administration. You now have an even more intransigent
Israeli government in power than the one to which all these concessions
were offered. And you have a PA which will be mortified that it was
exposed with its pants down. Peace talks are dead. Dead as a doornail.
Bibi wins big time. He can now go about building, occupying,
assassinating and engaging in war with virtually any party he wishes as
long as he wishes. He holds the cards. The PA and Obama got
bupkis.
And how will the other Arab governments in the Middle East react to
American diplomacy used so haphazardly and to such little effect?
But perhaps, just perhaps not all is lost. There are initiatives
that will be strengthened by this failure. All the alternative
peacemaking efforts such as BDS will look even more attractive than ever
since they are not tarnished by politicians’ dithering and compromises.
But even more important, I think the idea of an imposed settlement
looks not only feasible, but perhaps the only hope. I can foresee the
Quartet, EU and UN Security Council devising a settlement with the
input, but not veto power, of the parties and imposing it on them along
with provisions that offer security to both sides. It’s becoming
clearer and clearer that this is not an option, but rather a necessity.
The last hope.
For those who like inside baseball, who spilled the beans? Who
leaked these documents? My money says it was one of the members of the
Palestinian negotiation support unit (NSU), a
special British-funded entity that provided research, analysis and
strategic background for the Palestinian side in its negotiations with
Israel. The Guardian says that many members of this unit have quit,
growing disaffected by the sheer magnitude of what their bosses were
willing to concede while getting little or nothing in return. One of
these individuals would have a strong motive to embarrass the PA
negotiators. Also, it appears that the bifurcated nature of the NSU
(working for the PA but funded by Britain) allowed for mixed allegiances
not necessarily fully committed to the PA interests.
In effect, the Guardian may’ve inadvertently blown the cover of the
leaker with this statement:
The bulk of the documents are records, contemporaneous
notes and sections of verbatim transcripts of meetings drawn up by
officials of the Palestinian negotiation support unit (NSU), which has
been the main technical and legal backup for the Palestinian side in the
negotiations.
Read all the Guardian’s
Palestine Papers and an
overview
of all Guardian stories written about the Papers.
Al
Jazeera provides a different lens on the same documents.
Reposts are
coming in of an explosion at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport. The number of
victims continues to rise. What the Russian goverment initially reported
as ten causalities, has now climbed to 23. Another 130 have been
reported injured.
