Monday, January 24, 2011

Guardian leaks on Palestine papers...

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The Palestine papers
The Palestine papers Photograph: guardian.co.uk
The latest tranche of papers also reveal an intriguing comment by Tzipi Livni, the then Israeli foreign minister and now opposition leader, during negotiations in November 2007:
"I was the minister of justice. I am a lawyer ... But I am against law – international law in particular. Law in general."
The papers reveal some damning details on how Palestinian negotiators were prepared to give up on the right of return, with Abbas himself recorded as saying it would be "illogical" to require Israel to accept the estimated five million Palestinian refugees.
From the Guardian's coverage just posted this evening:
The scale of the compromise secretly agreed on refugees will be controversial among Palestinians who see the flight or expulsion of refugees when Israel was created in 1948 as their catastrophe (nakba) – while most Israelis regard the Palestinian right of return as incompatible with a democratic Jewish state.
The PLO's chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, is recorded telling the US Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, in February 2009: "On refugees, the deal is there." In June 2009, he confirmed what the deal was to his own staff: "Olmert accepted 1,000 refugees annually for the next 10 years."
Abbas, who is himself a refugee, is also recorded arguing privately: "On numbers of refugees, it is illogical to ask Israel to take 5 million, or indeed 1 million," he told officials. "That would mean the end of Israel."
More coverage from the Guardian with the latest on the Palestinian Papers and the negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli officials:
The latest revelations from the Palestinian Papers are on the fate of millions of Palestinian refugees and the right of return, an issue that has been at the heart of peace negotiations.
The latest leaks show that Israel maintained its refusal to take back anyhing other than a token number of refugees from the dispora– and that Palestinian negotiators were prepared to give way. Here's the Guardian's coverage this evening:
Palestinian negotiators privately agreed that only 10,000 refugees and their families – out of a total refugee population exceeding 5 million – could return to Israel as part of a peace settlement, leaked confidential documents reveal. PLO leaders also accepted Israel's demand to define itself as an explicitly Jewish state, in contrast to their public position.
Meanwhile the Jerusalem Post has its own jaundiced take on what the Palestinian Paper leaks are all about:
Just as all knowledgeable media consumers know not to take what is reported on Al- Jazeera as eternal truth, but rather strain it through layers of skepticism to filter out the network's own agenda (the same is true, to a lesser extent, with the Guardian's reporting on the Middle East), that same mechanism must kick in when analyzing these documents.
The Guardian and al-Jazeera will be publishing another tranche of documents from the Palestinian Papers shortly, so stand by.
Here's a response from aides to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as reported by Haaretz:
In its first response to the expose, Netanyahu's aides declared Monday that the "documents show that the Palestinian demand over the last year and a half to freeze construction in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem is ridiculous, since it is clear that they had already conceded the aforementioned neighborhoods in negotiations during Olmert's tenure."
The prime minister's "aides" appear to have confused a negotiating position with an agreement but nonetheless it also suggests that by attempting to paint the Palestinian position as "ridiculous," Netanyahu is going to run with this as a tactical victory.
The Economist's bloggers have taken a couple of bites at the leak of the Palestinian Papers.
The first (by "JA") thinks the details will harm the current PA leadership:
One upshot is that ordinary Palestinians, already disillusioned, will feel enraged at the PA leadership (while Hamas, in Gaza, will claim justification for its own hardline stance). Another is that few will believe Israelis if they repeat their claim that they have had no "partner" in peace. And a third is that the PA leadership will desperately try to discredit the revelations as "a distortion of the truth". The fourth consequence, of course, is that any more talk of a peace deal this year will seem simply risible.
The second (datelined Ramallah) thinks the details show the PA negotiators in a good light:
It shows the Palestinians defending their corner rather well, and largely upholding previous positions. On Jerusalem, Ahmed Qurie and Saeb Erekat, the two main Palestinian negotiators during the Annapolis process begun in 2007, stuck to the parameters established by then president Bill Clinton a decade ago of an ethnic partition of the city: the Jewish bits would remain Jewish, and the Palestinian bits Palestinian. Both men withstood Israeli pressure to extend the formula to two large Jewish settlements, Maale Adumim and Har Homa, to the east and south of the city.
On Jerusalem's Old City, the epicentre of the conflict, Palestinians also restated positions established under Yasser Arafat, the former Palestinian president. They insist that the only part of the Haram al-Sharif, the compound containing Islam's third holiest mosque and the site on which some Jews want to build a third temple, that they would consider ceding to Israel would be the Wailing Wall on which the temple stood. In indirect talks after Binyamin Netanyahu became Israel's prime minister, Mr Erekat went a bit further — in "a private" capacity — by advertising his readiness to consider "creative" alternatives, and implied his readiness to consider the supervision of an international committee, a much-floated idea. As for the rest of the Old City, the Palestinian team insisted on keeping all but the Jewish and some of the Armenian quarters.
The Ramallah correspondent says what happens next depends on what else will come out:
Should they show Mr Abbas and his aides compromising the Palestinian claim to the right of return for refugees uprooted in 1948 and 1967, his authority — particularly in the teeming refugee camps of Lebanon and Gaza — might be more seriously tested. Despite Al Jazeera's best efforts, though, predictions of a Tunisia-style toppling appear premature.
More reaction flows in. The New York Times quotes Peace Now, the Israeli group which promotes a two-state solution, as saying the documents showed that the Abbas government in Ramallah "are the most moderate pragmatic partner Israel can ask for."
"If we do not renew negotiations immediately, we will one day reminisce about the good offer that we turned down," the group said in a statement.
Here's NPR's coverage of the release of the Palestinian Papers, which it says "underscore 'in painful detail' how difficult achieving peace in the region continues to be".
As with the initial reaction to the WikiLeaks US embassy cables, some US journalists are quick to claim that the leaked Palestinian documents are old news.
Here's Edmund Sanders, Jerusalem bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, who can barely keep himself awake while reading them:
The documents so far haven't revealed anything that someone moderately familiar with the Mideast hasn't already heard.
Neither side is shown offering anything very fresh or sweeping, though it appeared the talks were serious, detailed and respectful.
"Old news" is also the standard response of a journalist who has been scooped.
What will be the political fallout within the Palestinian Authority? According to Haaretz, it may be less than first thought:
Despite initial fears, it's likely that the release of the Palestine papers by Al-Jazeera and The Guardian will not bring about a political earthquake in the Palestinian Authority - or even a power struggle within Fatah.
Top PA authorities chose to spend the 12 hours immediately following the leak focusing solely on Al-Jazeera's role, and have successfully created the impression that the entire debacle was part of a plot orchestrated by the Arab news network together with its brethren in the Muslim world - Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah - against the Palestinian Authority.
Indeed, the authors argue that the release of the documents could actually work in favour of the Abbas administration:
In fact, it is entirely possible that the dramatic leak may have a boomerang effect that will see increased support for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is being portrayed as wrongfully persecuted.
More than a few Palestinian pundits not associated with Fatah have pointed out inconsistencies in the Al-Jazeera campaign. According to these commentators, the Palestinians are close to achieving a diplomatic coup at the UN Security Council regarding settlement construction, and Al-Jazeera and its foreign allies are torpedoing this process.
J Street, the influential US lobby group that bills itself as "the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans", issues a statement on the Palestinian Papers and what they reveal. J Street's president Jeremy Ben-Ami calls on the US government to act:
How many more signs are needed before the White House recognizes the need for a serious Presidential initiative to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before it is too late?
We of course don't know yet if history will judge this week's release of critical Palestinian papers to be the straw that broke the camel's back of the chances for a two-state solution. Perhaps history will judge that moment to have been when Israel decided to continue settlement expansion last fall, or maybe it will be if and when the Palestinians simply give up on two states and focus on gaining equal rights in one bi-national state.
We do know, however, that week by week, step by step, the chances of achieving a two-state solution are dwindling. The failure of the Middle East peace process has created a vacuum, and further American inaction - giving in to the temptation to put off a new initiative - only decreases the chances of achieving lasting peace and security in the region.
J Street calls on President Obama to take strong action immediately to ensure that a viable two-state solution that meets well-known, internationally-accepted parameters is put on the table now. We urge that this begin with proposals on borders and security and proceed quickly to cover all final status issues.
We now know from the Palestinian papers released over the weekend by Al Jazeera that the Palestinian leadership is ready to make painful concessions to achieve a two-state solution. We also know that, absent movement on the diplomatic front, the next stop will be the United Nations in New York which will be asked not only to condemn Israeli settlements in the coming weeks but most likely to recognize Palestinian independence in the fall.
We see both publicly and now, from these documents, privately the ongoing intransigence of the Israeli government and its rigid determination to continue expanding and deepening its presence in areas beyond the 1967 Green Line. They are on the verge of killing chances for a two-state solution and with it the chances of Israel's long-term survival and security as both a Jewish and a democratic nation.
Only bold American leadership can lead to the resolution of this conflict, and we urge the President to act now before it is too late.
There is some dispute between al-Jazeera and other sources over the size and extent of the attack on the news channel's offices in the West Bank city of Ramallah, as we mentioned earlier.
According to al-Jazeera's televised coverage, a group of only about 50 protesters attempted to break into the offices. But Haartz reports that some 250 protesters were gathered outside: "Palestinian police removed the violent protesters and prevented the larger crowd outside the building from entering."
Al-Jazeera's television coverage of the Palestinian Papers includes footage labelled "reconstruction" of key points in meetings between Israeli and Palestinian, showing officials huddled in conference rooms, in an attempt to bring to life some of the minutes and statements that make up the cache of documents.
The latest video, via al-Jazeera, shows the response to the leaks from Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
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