The Palestine papers have broken a taboo. Now the arguments for peace can be open
The response to the papers shows why information belongs in the daylight – in the Middle East no less than anywhere else
Critics of the publication of the Palestine papers by the Guardian and al-Jazeera are aiming their fire in several directions. They have variously claimed that the documents are fake; that they are partial; that they reveal nothing new; that they should never have been published; and that they help Hamas, damage the peace process and threaten to destroy the two-state solution.
Let's start with the silliest first: the claim of forgery, casting these papers as the Hitler Diaries of the Middle East. That was swiftly swept aside today by Nabil Shaath, a former member of the Palestinian negotiation team who, along with several others close to the talks, vouched for the documents' authenticity. Are they partial? Only in the sense that 1,600 pages out of tens of thousands could always be described as incomplete. Some have complained that the documents only provide the view from the Palestinian side of the negotiating table. But they purport to do nothing else. To suggest that makes them unsuitable for publication is to suggest the New York Times should never have published the Pentagon Papers without an equivalent stash of paperwork from the North Vietnamese defence ministry.
But clearly, say the critics, these were leaked by someone with an agenda. I don't know the identity of the source for the Palestine papers, but I'd be pretty surprised if they didn't have a purpose for their actions. That is true of every leak through recorded time. Should the Daily Telegraph not have published Liam Fox's letter protesting over defence cuts last autumn because the leaker of that letter clearly had a political objective? Of course not. Observe that standard and we'd never know anything. Besides, readers can usually put two and two together.
Still, say some complainers, these papers don't reveal anything we didn't know. Indeed, they are "incredibly boring", according to Noah Pollak of Commentary magazine – so boring that they warrant six separate pieces on the magazine's website.
Joining the "nothing new" chorus is Benny Morris, eager to pour cold water on the revelation that the Palestinians were ready to concede areas of East Jerusalem settled by Jews. Didn't the Guardian remember that those very areas were conceded back in 2000 as part of the "Clinton parameters" that followed the Camp David negotiations? But it's Morris who's suffering memory loss here. Surely he recalls the claim, repeated endlessly, that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians had rejected those 2000 terms. He should remember: after all, Morris was one of the lead disseminators of that message. If Palestinians now accept what they once rejected, that's news.
What of the graver charge that the Guardian had no business publishing papers whose exposure could discredit the Palestinian leadership and thereby damage, even destroy, the peace process? This is not a question confined to the wilder shores of the rightwing blogosphere. In a round of media interviews, I was asked by one mainstream journalist: "How does the Guardian feel about putting a gun to the head of the two-state solution?"This touches on the argument rehearsed so fiercely during the WikiLeaks furore. It is that once an organisation has been handed information like this, it either publishes it or it suppresses it. Those are the options. Which is why no news organisation worthy of the name would hesitate to release a trove of documents of this kind.
Only in the rarest exceptions – where there is a direct risk to a named individual's life – should journalists withhold such information from their readers or viewers. (Indeed, to protect certain individuals some documents have been redacted by both the Guardian and al-Jazeera.) Of course publication will have political consequences, even awkward ones. But that cannot be for journalists and editors to decide: their job is to find out what is happening and report it, as best they can. The consequences are for others to manage. It has to be that way, otherwise newspapers would never publish anything: somebody in power would always be there to argue that it was best to hold off, that now was not the time. And the public would remain in the dark.
This is particularly true for the Middle East, where there is all too little daylight. Take Tunisia. It may be an exaggeration to call the people's revolt there the "first WikiLeaks revolution", but it's clear that revelations about the luxury lifestyle of the ruling family played a crucial role. Yet when those diplomatic cables were first released, Barack Obama slammed the document dump as "deplorable", while Hillary Clinton branded it an attack on America and the international community.
The point here is that journalists shouldn't be expected to weigh all the possible consequences of publication because the most important can – as in the Tunisia case – be unforeseen. Already there are signs of that with the Palestine papers.The initial assumption of many observers – and perhaps of the leakers themselves – was that the revelation of Palestinian negotiators' willingness to compromise would not just offend Palestinian pride but instantly spark a wave of revulsion, leading to a Tunisia-style revolt against the PA. With the PA gone, the peace process would be over and the two-state solution gone for ever.
That could still happen, especially given the PA's already low standing among its population. But, initially at least, the Palestinian public does not seem to be following the script. One Palestinian insider told me yesterday that some Palestinians suspect a plot against the PA, hatched by al-Jazeera's Qatari paymasters in favour of their Hamas allies. The man in the Ramallah street may have little faith in the PA, but he doesn't relish the Hamas alternative or like outside interference.
What's more, says that senior Palestinian figure, the leak of these papers could do something the PA had failed to do: prepare Palestinian public opinion for the painful concessions that peace will, one distant day, require. This leak has blown apart any pretence that an agreement could come without a heavy price. Now there can be an argument about what precisely a future deal would look like and what it would be worth – an argument in the open.
A similar process happened in Israel after Camp David in 2000, when a leak revealed the prime minister was countenancing the division of Jerusalem. There was sound and fury, but a taboo was broken. This time round the Palestine papers are already having a useful impact in Israel – prompting a clutch of influential figures to realise there is, after all, a partner on the Palestinian side.
So yes, you might not like every word. For the record, I disagreed with the Guardian editorial that described Palestinian concessions as "craven": I prefer to admire the readiness of the Palestinians to move, urging Israelis to do the same. Still, I cannot join those who wish these texts had stayed in the dark.• This article has been launched with comments off. They will be switched on at 9am tomorrow
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Or we could give them our support and strengthen their negotiating position.
BOYCOTT, DIVEST, SANCTION
Meanwhile, I think this is a well-argued piece putting forward the case why journalists have a duty, in most cases, to publish such leaked material.
You expressed surprise at this 2 days ago Jonathan but most of us were not surprised at all.
Those who have witnessed the actions (not always the words) of successive Israeli governments know that it is Israel which has systematically sabotaged efforts for peace over decades.
Where is the OUTRAGE at Israeli behaviour in the light of this ??
Yes, to a point.
But the more pertinent point is, as it always is when a powerful oppressor keeps its boot on the throat of its downtrodden opponent for so long (think Northern Ireland, Palestine, India, South Africa etc): how much ground is the oppressor is willing to concede?
Israel will not give up an inch of ground it has stolen/reclaimed/won.
How on earth do you construct a peace process around that central tenet?
Nothing admirable about "concessions" made by a dictatorship that has zero support from it's own population, if afraid to hold elections because it knows that, is propped up by the enemies and security services of the people it "governs" and doesn't dare tell those people what it is really saying to the occupier.
This is pathetic. As is the PA. And hopefully the result of the leaking will be to make further treachery impossible.
If only we could perfect the perfect lie detector, then these sorts of negotiations would be even more open (and probably unnecessary as the problems would be far less likely to balloon over years and years of lie and counter-lie). This could lead to the next stage of human evolution.
Fatah is essentially a rejectionist organisation which would like to establish a single Palestinian state covering both Israel and Palestine. It was manoeuvred into a public "land for peace" stance after a huge amount of diplomatic effort. However, it continued to feed its population the fantasy that one day, Israel and the Jews would be swept away.
A variety of factors, including US and international pressure, and the spectacle of Hamas couping in Gaza, has persuaded some (but not all) of those at the top of Fatah that now is the time to push for a settlement. The trouble is:
1. It hasn't told the Palestinian electorate that they're not going to get Israel
2. It hasn't persuaded the rest of Fatah that a final settlement must be made.
This may go some way to explaining why
1. Erekat and Abbas are now angrily denying that the leaked records are accurate.
2. No peace deal was ever reached.
In short, I completely agree with you. Now is the time for Abbas and Erekat to be frank with their electorate, and for the international community similarly to say:
"Look, this is what a peace deal looks like. Everybody knows it. Now go negotiate the details"
Israel vs Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas: are all gearing up for Total War this year - a fight to the death, no holds barred, until one side is annihilated.
The Egyptian, Algerian, Tunisian Regimes will try to deflect attention from the pro-democracy protests by encouraging such a military conflict.
BOYCOTT, DIVEST, SANCTION
As Shania Twain might have said- "Shouting slogans don't impress me much"
as if these leaks don't make clear Israeli rejectionism leaves very little room for any solution.
"1. It hasn't told the Palestinian electorate that they're not going to get Israel"
You should stop peddling these falsehoods; the Palestinians are well informed and educated and are quite aware that Israel is not going to disappear.
Direct your criticism at the uncompromising stance of the Israelis for a change.
During World War I, President Wilson became convinced that Secret Diplomacy and secret deals between countries were a VERY BAD THING. They caused distrust at best and wars at worst, so they were to be outlawed and banned for ever. He made that one of his famous 14 Points in 1918- from now on all diplomacy and negotiations were to be conducted in public.
His Brave New World lasted just a few months. Already at the Treaty of Versailles, Wilson was doing secret deals.
There always will be secret deals- and red faces when the deals are made public.
That is my reading as well.
However, what does this tell you about the Guardian, Jonathan. How can you, as a liberal pro-peace Zionist, bear to work with colleagues who basically do align themselves with rejectionists, who admire Hamas, and who regard any compromise by the parties as a "craven" betrayal.
My objection to the Guardian's presentation of this story is precisely the same as yours.
The Guardian headline should have been:
"A Peace Deal Is Within Their Grasp".
The Guardian should have been promoting a politics which ends the rejectionism, builds confidence in the prospect of peace and stability, promotes normalisation of relations, and so on.
Instead, unfortunately, some of your colleagues are still living in the world of far Left, student politics, where the Palestinians ( and Israelis) just cannon fodder for their dark fantasies.
This is also the article you should have written on Sunday, by the way.
"As Shania Twain might have said- "Shouting slogans don't impress me much"
Hmm...sanctions impressed the South Africans in the end.
It is because of the US position as much as anything else that the PA position was indeed 'craven' as all but admitted by Sa'eb Erekat.
He may not be a savoury character (I know first hand) but even he was exasparated to the point of hopelesness, knowing from 20 years of the same pattern that nothing would come of these negotiatons.
Why were they continued? Was it because the PA, already dismissed as by many on 'the Street' as being little more than corrupt Israeli and US stooges were finding themselves in position where they could deliver little more than that which would confirm that view and were left begging not to have to?
Or was it that, despite what was known their knowing they were presenting terms that would be obviously unacceptable to the Palestinian nation, the PA leadership and the negotiatiors want to continue to benefit from their positions at almost any cost?
We never know for sure, but it's probably a both.
Bit risky not to call craven anyway.
Not craven?
There is nothing admirable about "concessions" made by a dictatorship that has zero support from it's own population; is afraid to hold elections because it knows that; is propped up by the security services of the enemies of the people it "governs" and that doesn't dare tell it's people what it is really saying to the occupier.
This is pathetic. As is the PA.
And hopefully the result of the leaking will be to make further treachery impossible.
BOYCOTT, DIVEST , SANCTION
Is it forgotton that the Palestinians have already, from their entirely legitimate perspective, made huge concessions in the name of peace? By accepting a two state solution on what are now the legal, international borders, the Palestinians have agreed to give up over 75% of their historic homeland. Whatever the legitimacy of the idea of a Jewish-majority nation being established, that is the way the Palestinians will see it, and quite understandably so. In addition, many of them have probably, in their minds, accepted that most of the 6 million refugees will never return to the homes from which they were driven.
If we’re going to praise the Palestinians for making concessions in the name of peace, why not praise these ones? Israel has done nothing comparable to this. Zero.
Let us also remember that Israel's occupation and colonisation of the territories occupied in 1967 is 100 per cent illegal, as affirmed by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Israel has no legitimate or legal claim to any of the occupied territories, so Israeli and Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem and the West Bank cannot possibly be placed on an equivalent footing.
Yet this is precisely the implication of your drawing an equivalance between Israelis "breaking the taboo" of giving back some land they have stolen, and Palestinians "breaking the taboo" of losing even more of what is being taken from them.
Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, constitue the bare minimum required for a viable and functioning Palestinian state. Yet in the name of what you see as pragmatism, Palestinian negotiators were apparently prepared to accede to Israel taking practically all the desirable land in what is left of historic Palestine, including the historic heart of Palestinian social, cultural and economic life – East Jerusalem – in its entirity. To do this would not be to facilitate a "two-state solution" because only one side would be left with anything you could legitimately call a state.
Lets be clear about why Palestinians have come to this point. They are a weak, stateless people, dispossesed by a regional military powerhouse that is backed to the hilt by the United States. They are being "pragmatic" in the sense that it would be pragmatic for you to hand your wallet to a man with a knife at your throat. For those of us who observe at a distance, uncoerced, to praise their pragmatism in this situation, strikes me as utterly abhorrent. Surely we should be using our voice to push back against the disgraceful bullying of the US and Israel, and demanding Israel's immediate withdrawal to within its legal boundaries? I can see what might stop the Palestinians from doing that, after decades of brutalisation. What's stopping us?
The Guardian is doing no such thing. Israel has already put the gun to the head of the two-state solution, all by itself. That has been clear to any thinking observer and now it is out in the open: there is no prospect of a two-state solution. There never was.
The warmongering ‘Peace Envoy’, Tony Blair, should now quietly pack his bags and leave the Middle East for ever before any further damage is done to the region.
Delusions of Guardian grandeur?
As for the so-called Palestinian papers: clearly it depends on your perspective whether you think they put Israel or the PA in a bad light. For me they contained no surprises (well, that's the summaries I've been reading, of course).
For their can be no pace without loss on both sides, and it’s clear that the Guardian feels the Palestinians should never have to lose in anyway and that any Palestinian leader that suggest otherwise is ‘traitor’..
The Palestinians already have too many people willing to see their blood spilled in order to achieve others ‘objectives’. Then hardly need a news organisation pushing for a never arriving ‘pace’ because of the demand for terms that one party can and will never agree too. That bottom line, the Guardian blames Israel for ever action, even those which are not its own, the best thing it could be bring to the process is its silence as its show its simple incapable of providing the well-founded and balance coverage it actual needs.
I joined in the Boycott of South African goods. 20 years later Apartheid fell.
And...as is so boringly repeated here over and over- in today's multinational world, there are relatively few exclusively Israeli goods to boycott but vast numbers of things- include mobile phones, computers, medical equipment and others- that include some Israeli components.
Where do you draw the line? How would you know if your mobile phone contained a tiny piece of Israeli technology?
Would anyone happen to know what the prospects are for Palestinian refugees wanting to return not to Israel but to the WB/Gaza (i.e. the new state if and when it happens)?
What could Mr Freedland be referring to?
Oh! Iran!
After all, he is hardly talking about the US and it's allies, the EU, the British security services who were plotting to "crush" (democratically elected) Hamas. The isn't really interference atall atall, is it?
Exactly the same sort of weasel wordology used to describe neighbours interfering with the Western occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan; as if the invasions and occupations were some organic part of the internal political process.
They had elections in the whole of the occupied territories. Hamas won.
Might not like it but they did.
For many years Hamas (at least since the second Intifada) has gained support from secularists most importantly because people believed they were prepared to resist and partly because they were a 'movement' offering charitable support, while Fatah increadingly did nothing in response to presistent and daily Israeli humiliation . And that was then. At least then Fatah were not seen as 'agents'.
Is it right ? Yes. Secrecy is almost always self-serving. The times when secrecy is really necessary, in the public interest, are extraordinarily rare and mostly short term.
Hamas doesn not demand 'river to the sea' as is so often lazily claimed. It has been made prefectly clear by leadership that this is not the case and that it would accept '67, but it is savvy enough not to formalise it until after Israel, US recognise it as formal negotiatiing partner.
Israel spent the years before the PLO publicly accepted it saying that if only the PLO would accept 242 then we could make progress. As soon as this happened 242 became ambiguous, Israel understood it differently, now it wants ever-increasin amounts. If anyone can be accused of ambitions of 'River to the Sea' it appears to be Israel.
"I joined in the Boycott of South African goods. 20 years later Apartheid fell."
High five !
Personally I think a cultural and sporting boycott would be quite enough for most Israelis to understand that they need to insist that their government reach a just settlement.
In "today's globalized world" (CNBC catch-phrase), a boycott of goods and components is pretty well impossible.
We could also stop selling armoured bull-dozers to them, that seems simple and symbolic.
Indeed. She doesn't seem averse to a bit of shouty sloganeering herself though. Nice silver hotpants.
Whisper it quietly
boycott, divest, sanction
dissidentstockbroker
QuiEstInQuiEstOut
Strange how two people can interpret the revelations so differently, isn't it?
Although at least dissidentstockbroker doesn't come up with outright lies.
Cities and Thrones and Powers, Stand in Time's eye, Almost as long as flowers, Which daily die:
Israeli fruit would be a good place to start. No, it won't bring the Israeli government to its knees - they've still got their friendly Uncle Sam to bail them out, no matter what they do - but it's better than doing nothing. If the whole of the EU was to boycott Israeli grown or exclusively-made exports it would have some impact and that would hit someone's pockets and just maybe cause a moment's reflection. In parallel, it would be good to have an embargo on arms sales of any kind to this rogue state.
A PA "insider"? Maybe I've been getting Mr Freedland's intended meaning wrong - it could be that he was literally talking about a single individual from Ramallah! (rather than the implicit meaning of 'most folk in the West Bank' that one would take from the common usage of the term "man in the street").
Because, manifestly, if this singular man from Ramallah really represented a majority, the PA and it backers would have held elections long ago.
perhaps the pa should have realized this and walked away, with some personal honor. but they were in a situation with no win position.
the real dishonor is with the usa, and the western nations that joined them in 'solving' their jewish problem, with the extinction of palestine..
Well, given that you've called me a liar for pointing out that Fatah remains a rejectionist party, with a leadership that periodically takes part in negotiations and makes offers, which it then denies when they're made public...
The rule of law is a first step to a civilised world. Unfortunately it fails when those who make the law make it to suit themselves. Worse, when the United States, that beacon of the civilised world, can't be bothered to function within it, what hope is there ?
A grassroots movement to hold leaders to account, perhaps ?
BOYCOTT, DIVEST SANCTION
Did you read the word 'formailised'?
I'm not denying what the Hamas Covenant says. I'm rederring to what the Hamas leadership has said to both the US and to the PLO and (not openly) to Israel.
In any case, Haniyeh is not a major political decision-maker in Hamas. The top role is that of the leader, Khaled Meshal, who is based in Damascus. In 2009 he stated publicly Hamas's willingness to cooperate with "a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict which included a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders." The stated additional conditions were that Palestinian refugees be given the right to return to Israel and that East Jerusalem be recognized as the new state's capitaL
That is the same position the PA took when it entered talks in Madrid in 1991, and which it publicly claimed to have more or less held ever since.
Except in Estonia, of course! ;)