Palestine papers: Now we know. Israel had a peace partner

The classified documents show Palestinians willing to go to extreme lengths and Israel holding a firm line on any peace deal

Who will be most damaged by this extraordinary glimpse into the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process? Perhaps the first casualty will be Palestinian national pride, their collective sense of dignity in adversity badly wounded by the papers revealed today.

Many on the Palestinian streets will recoil to read not just the concessions offered by their representatives – starting with the yielding of those parts of East Jerusalem settled by Israeli Jews – but the language in which those concessions were made.

To hear their chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, tell the Israelis that the Palestinians are ready to concede "the biggest Yerushalayim in Jewish history" – even using the Hebrew word for the city – will strike many as an act of humiliation.

Referring to Ariel Sharon as a "friend" will offend those Palestinians who still revile the former prime minister as the "Butcher of Beirut" for his role in the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

Telling Tzipi Livni, Israel's then foreign minister, on the eve of national elections "I would vote for you" will strike many Palestinians as grovelling of a shameful kind.

It is this tone which will stick in the throat just as much as the substantive concessions on land or, as the Guardian will reveal in coming days, the intimate level of secret co-operation with Israeli security forces or readiness of Palestinian negotiators to give way on the highly charged question of the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Of course it should be said that this cache of papers is not exhaustive and may have been leaked selectively; other documents might provide a rather different impression. Nevertheless, these texts will do enormous damage to the standing of the Palestinian Authority and to the Fatah party that leads it. Erekat himself may never recover his credibility.

But something even more profound is at stake: these documents could discredit among Palestinians the very notion of negotiation with Israel and the two-state solution that underpins it.

And yet there might also be an unexpected boost here for the Palestinian cause. Surely international opinion will see concrete proof of how far the Palestinians have been willing to go, ready to move up to and beyond their "red lines", conceding ground that would once have been unthinkable – none more so than on Jerusalem.

In the blame game that has long attended Middle East diplomacy, this could see a shift in the Palestinians' favour.

The effect of these papers on Israel will be the reverse.

They will cause little trouble inside the country. There are no exposés of hypocrisy or double talk; on the contrary, the Israelis' statements inside the negotiating room echo what they have consistently said outside it. Livni in particular – now leader of the Israeli opposition – will be heartened that no words are recorded here to suggest she was ever a soft touch.

Still, in the eyes of world opinion that very consistency will look much less admirable. These papers show that the Israelis were intransigent in public – and intransigent in private.

What's more, the documents blow apart what has been a staple of Israeli public diplomacy: the claim that there is no Palestinian partner. That theme, a refrain of Israeli spokesmen on and off for years, is undone by transcripts which show that there is not only a Palestinian partner but one more accommodating than will surely ever appear again.

Where does this leave the peace process itself? The pessimistic view is that what little life remained in it has now been punched out. On the Palestinian side these revelations are bound to strengthen Hamas, who have long rejected Fatah's strategy of negotiation, arguing that armed resistance is the only way to secure Palestinian statehood. Hamas will now be able to claim that diplomacy not only fails to bring results, it brings national humiliation.

But the despair will not be confined to the Palestinians. Others may well conclude that if a two-state solution is not possible even under these circumstances – when the Palestinians go as far as they can but still fail, in Livni's words, to "meet our demands" – then it can never be achieved. This is the view that sees Israelis and Palestinians as two acrobats who, even when they bend over backwards, just cannot touch: the Palestinian maximum always falls short of the Israeli minimum.

The optimistic view will hope these papers act as a wake-up call, jolting the US – exposed here as far from the even-handed, honest broker it claims to be – into pressing reset on its Middle East effort, beginning with a determination to exert proper pressure on Israel, pushing it to budge.

It goes without saying that in any wager between optimists and pessimists in the Middle East, the smart money is usually on the latter.


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  • Bengalim

    23 January 2011 8:07PM

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  • Lote

    23 January 2011 8:10PM

    beginning with a determination to exert proper pressure on Israel, pushing it to budge.
    --------

    Fat chance of that happening!

  • niphette

    23 January 2011 8:12PM

    I'm usually a massive proponent of the right of people to know these things, but is it worth it if the Guardian publications start a new war in which hundreds or thousands are killed again? It's a little too optimistic to hope even that these papers will turn American public opinion against Israel, let alone soften the heart of the administration.

  • benderBR

    23 January 2011 8:13PM

    It is now clear that Israel is right regarding Jerusalem.
    It is now known to all these Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem will remain in Israeli hands in any agreement and the Palestinian current demand for not a single home or school to be build in them in a 100% settlement freeze is only a step designed to prevent peace talks.
    Palestinian feel they can't get as good of a deal with PM Netanyahu as they would with Tzipi and they know how much Obama would press to reach a deal, so they use this tactic to prevent talks.

  • HushedSilence

    23 January 2011 8:16PM

    To hear their chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, tell the Israelis that the Palestinians are ready to concede "the biggest Yerushalayim in Jewish history" – even using the Hebrew word for the city – will strike many as an act of humiliation

    .So using the Hebrew name for Jerusalem while presumably speaking Hebrew strikes you as humiliating? when I speak Hebrew I talk of Yerushalayim but when I speak English I say ''Jerusalem''. Is that too a ''humiliation''? You're reaching so hard that it's embarrassing.

  • Tugster

    23 January 2011 8:18PM

    This comment has been removed by a moderator. Replies may also be deleted.

  • EgotisticalUsername

    23 January 2011 8:19PM

    This comment has been removed by a moderator. Replies may also be deleted.

  • HushedSilence

    23 January 2011 8:19PM

    Who chose what to leak and on what basis? David Leigh has told the world that the Guardian tempted Wikileaks to give them the cables. What is the bet that the Guardian selectively chose papers to advance this very theory that Freedland is proposing?

  • optimist99

    23 January 2011 8:20PM

    Let's hope the Tunisian example is contagious, and leads to the fall of Mubarak.

    Mubarak is "generally supportive of Israel" as Wikipedia states.
    Clearly because of the US support for Mubarak.

    He is part of the house of cards that hopefully will soon fall, so that the Palestinians can obtain the justice they deserve

  • bedebyes

    23 January 2011 8:20PM

    This comment has been removed by a moderator. Replies may also be deleted.

  • bedebyes

    23 January 2011 8:23PM

    optimist99

    He is part of the house of cards that hopefully will soon fall, so that the Palestinians can obtain the justice they deserve

    see my comment above and then answer, you do seem to spend a lot of time worrying about the 'Palestinian injustice' don't you?

  • Sorcey

    23 January 2011 8:26PM

    So Israelis were never interested in peace, and lied a lot about how much the Palestinians were intransigent and uninterested in peace?

    There is no surprise here. The only mild surprise is that the usual trolls are here defending it using the exact same arguments and cut and paste distractions.

  • benderBR

    23 January 2011 8:27PM

    Dakard
    23 January 2011 8:20PM

    Bender, did you bother reading the piece above?


    Yes I did and you?
    Is it not clear that Israel was right when they said there is no logic in demanding a Building freeze in Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem like Pisgat Zeev and Gilo when both sides already agree they will remain in Israeli hands in any agreement?

  • encasedsliceofsheet

    23 January 2011 8:27PM

    niphette

    I'm usually a massive proponent of the right of people to know these things, but is it worth it if the Guardian publications start a new war in which hundreds or thousands are killed again?

    "The Guardian publications" does not have a military that I'm aware of.

    Nevertheless the ability of aggressive states to expand and oppress is enhanced by their secrecy. Strange as it seems there are still many who see the Israeli government as an honest broker, and so long as that is the case it is up to the press to report reality.

  • mintaka

    23 January 2011 8:28PM

    Surely international opinion will see concrete proof of how far the Palestinians have been willing to go, ready to move up to and beyond their "red lines", conceding ground that would once have been unthinkable – none more so than on Jerusalem. In the blame game that has long attended Middle East diplomacy, this could see a shift in the Palestinians' favour.

    Wish it were so, but that presupposes that international opinion is moulded by a dispassionate analysis of evidence and that, once the evidence is in, conclusions will naturally follow.

    Unfortunately, I don't think that is the case, for any one of the international opinions that we could speak of. The opinion of the major state actors is an amalgam of self-interest and the power of domestic political lobbies. It can't ignore facts, but it can shape and gloss and polish them until not even their mother would recognise them any more. The opinion of the general public will likewise be based on facts filtered to them by a media which is not new to the business of selection and interpretation.

    Which brings us to us, the general public. We are not the perfectly rational automatons you'd like us to be. We don't like changing our minds on anything we are emotionally invested in (I include myself in this) and will find a way to rationalise the facts, whatever they may be.

    Sorry for being so pessimistic, but in the run-up to the Iraq war, I was flabbergasted at how little media coverage there was of any viewpoint seriously challenging the idea of a major WMD threat, and by how many people believed the government line. The countervailing evidence wasn't absent. It was simply ignored (not by everybody, but by comfortably more than 50%). I am not persuaded by the idea that Wikileaks, or some other technological marvel, can save us from our own desire for self-deception. I say that even though I still support Wikileaks.

  • Orthus

    23 January 2011 8:29PM

    EgotisticalUsername

    So the Graun has decided to play fast and loose with people's lives again, eh? I'm out of here - this is disgusting.


    The Guardian having greater penetration in the Middle East than al-Jazeera? Missing you already.

  • anoutsider

    23 January 2011 8:34PM

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  • elsewherenow

    23 January 2011 8:34PM

    The guardian seems to assume without any caveats that papers written by the Palestiians and 'leaked' are true.
    And in other news released documents show that Yassir Arafat was really a nice guy who was trying so so hard not to murder innocents. Leaked Hamas papers also suggest that they were going to lay down their arms and become hippys, before the Israeli's stopped them.

  • DonkeyLogic

    23 January 2011 8:35PM

    The classified documents show Palestinians willing to go to extreme lengths and Israel holding a firm line on any peace deal

    "Firm Line" is very polite language for what is patently intractable, borderline-racist, violence-backed occupation tactics.

  • irel

    23 January 2011 8:38PM

    benderBR:

    It is now clear that Israel is right regarding Jerusalem


    No. Israel is not right, it is powerful. Big difference.

    It is now known to all these Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem will remain in Israeli hands in any agreement


    No again. That's the agreement that was rejected

    the Palestinian current demand for not a single home or school to be build in them in a 100% settlement freeze is only a step designed to prevent peace talks.


    No. Look at what was being offered, including a joint committee on the Temple of the Mount. It was a tactic to save face in front of the people they represent. Whatever the ethics of that, you cannot seriously read these files and say that the PA does not want to reach an agreement, particularly as the agreements they offered would be so unpopular that they would probably be removed as soon as they were made public -- as they probably will be, now.

    How can anyone defend Israel's 'negotiations' after this?

  • TonyChinnery

    23 January 2011 8:38PM

    But anyone not completely stupid, or blinded by the US propaganda machine knew all along that the so called 'peace process' was a sham. The Israelis have no interest in peace. Its the same old story. How did the Americans clean out the indigenous Indian owners of the land? With sham treaties and peacemeal take overs, then reacting with overwhelming force to any sign of rebellion.
    The only way to have meaningful talks between the parties would be to give the Palestinians an equivalent amount of tanks and F16 warplanes, plus the odd atomic bomb, to create talks between equals.
    Failing that, talk of a 'two state solution' is equivalent to saying 'let's do nothing'.

  • duster

    23 January 2011 8:41PM

    benderBR,

    How is the willingness of the Palestinians to offer extraordinary concessions in order to move forward, and the responding refusal of Israel to budge at all, an example of the Palestinians using 'tactics to prevent talks'? Could you expand - coherently please - on what you mean.

  • benderBR

    23 January 2011 8:41PM

    irel
    That agreement was rejected but it was rejected by Abbas, read Olmerts peace offer, he offered 98%+ of the land the Palestinians asked for he offered a joint committee on the Temple of the Mount he offered safe passage between Gaza and West Bank and Abbas refused to sign.

  • tinlaurelledandhardy

    23 January 2011 8:43PM

    It is time for a universal boycott on all trade and interaction with Israel. It has become the worse bandit among countries and this really without ever needing to do so. We were prepared to back them had they not behaved like devils towards their victims. A shame. A government without shame leads a people who could but do not, shake their shame off in general elections. The brave people who are trying to do so are now persecuted in their own country, Israel.

  • bedebyes

    23 January 2011 8:43PM

    Vancouver theory

    Actually that is an embarrassing piece of Canadian history when Canada had the none is too many campaign after WW2.

    You don't have to go back so far, they're stealing Indian land today.

  • benderBR

    23 January 2011 8:44PM

    duster
    23 January 2011 8:41PM

    How is the willingness of the Palestinians to offer extraordinary concessions in order to move forward, and the responding refusal of Israel to budge at all, an example of the Palestinians using 'tactics to prevent talks'? Could you expand - coherently please - on what you mean.

    Israel offered 10 months of building freeze every place but Jerusalems Jewish neighborhoods which we all know will remain Israeli in any agreement.
    Palestinians still refused to hold talks with current Israeli government for 9.5 month claiming that freeze is not good enough.
    What else would you call refusing to negotiate ?

  • zombus

    23 January 2011 8:49PM

    As far as I'm aware, Sharon did not invade Lebanon in 1982 purely because he wanted to kill Lebanese.

    He and Israel were provoked to do so by the fact that Palestinian fighters had set up in the South Lebanon border area and were continually firing into Israel.

    (This was after they'd been allowed to live in Lebanon following their inglorious stay in Jordan, where they caused such grief King Hussein had many of them massacred in 1970 and expelled.)

    They were not idle in committing outrages in Lebanon. A reason the Lebanese Christians took such horrible vengeance on Palestinians in Sabra and Chatila is that some of the Palestinians had, prior to this, raped and murdered Lebanese Christian people.

    As far as I see, Arafat's P.L.O. militias caused the invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

    In the 1967 and 1973 wars, to the best of my knowledge, Lebanon was not a player. Leaving aside (what I assume are) fringe Zionists who think Eretz Israel should extend to the Litani River, I think Israel has no wish to invade or occupy Lebanon at all, provided only it is inhabited or stayed in by people who are not out to attack Israel.

    As far as I see, Arafat's P.L.O. militias caused the invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
    They were the ones that started rolling the snowball down the hill, and Beirut suffered at the bottom.

  • tinlaurelledandhardy

    23 January 2011 8:51PM

    After all, it is fair to consider Fatah as an illegal imposter into the negotiations; they are not elected by the Palestinians but rather have become the chosen partner of the enemy and occupier of Palestine. How Obama and Clinton could take part in this shabby business will taint the US for a long time. As it will any other negotiator who have taken part in this sham.

  • iamid

    23 January 2011 8:52PM

    the documents blow apart what has been a staple of Israeli public diplomacy: the claim that there is no Palestinian partner. That theme, a refrain of Israeli spokesmen on and off for years, is undone by transcripts which show that there is not only a Palestinian partner but one more accommodating than will surely ever appear again.

    As Jonathan Freedland 's insight and the the headline shouts, Israel had a peace partner. This also shows how total is Israel's belief that they have the upper hand, rejecting all offers because they want - and believe they can get - more.

    Shame on our leaders in the UK and US, that they know this is going on and yet give it tacit, even open support.

  • tinlaurelledandhardy

    23 January 2011 8:55PM

    Perhaps the first casualty will be Palestinian national pride, their collective sense of dignity in adversity badly wounded by the papers revealed today.

    That would be nothing, nothing, compared to the loss of their country don't you think.

  • Sorcey

    23 January 2011 8:55PM

    tinlaurelledandhardy, you're absolutely right. The BDS movement will hopefully grow and apply pressure as people discover what two-faced hypocrites successive UK governments have been, fuelling the conflict and supporting Israel's occupation.

  • DavidShaffer

    23 January 2011 9:02PM

    I wonder at the timing of this.
    The timing of the publication of the Palestine Papers ensures as little attention as possible will be paid to the Turkel report.
    (In case anyone is interested in what Israel has to say about flotilla incident, blockades, occupation....
    http://www.turkel-committee.gov.il/files/wordocs/8808report-eng.pdf )

  • duster

    23 January 2011 9:05PM

    benderBR

    ...erm, but surely, if the Palestinians are willing to concede most of the settlements, which perhaps you could admit is a huge sacrifice on their part, this would be contingent on the settlements not expanding in the meantime, into even more Palestinian territory. It wouldn't be possible to definitively redraw the map under agreement from both sides if the settlements were continuing to expand.
    Or, do you not agree?

  • sjxt

    23 January 2011 9:05PM

    Face facts Jonathan. There are no grounds for optimism. The only thing to do is sit back and wait for the balance of power to change, as every such balance in human history has before it. On present form everyone reading this will be long dead by the time that happens. But the odds are that some time in the future the descendants of today's Israeli's will have reason to regret their ancestors' stupidity and intransigence in failing to cut a deal while they were strong.

  • HushedSilence

    23 January 2011 9:06PM

    The direct contradictions in the part of the 'papers' quoted make me doubt their authenticity.

    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.

    This directly contradicts the Fatah Revolutionary Council's decision that there will be no peace until they control all of Jerusalem and the outlying villages.

    Also, who wrote them and why are they Palestinian only? where is the Israeli version?

  • SeanThorp

    23 January 2011 9:08PM

    But something even more profound is at stake: these documents could discredit among Palestinians the very notion of negotiation with Israel and the two-state solution that underpins it.

    You say that like it's a bad thing but the stupid idea of a two state solution has been slowly receding as a viable option for some time and it's to be hoped that it's finally killed off by this information. There should be a single secular state and all the people in the refugee camps should have the right of return to their lands.

  • canadaneil

    23 January 2011 9:08PM

    Of course it should be said that this cache of papers is not exhaustive and may have been leaked selectively; other documents might provide a rather different impression.

    Precisely Jonathan.....

  • Ozzicht

    23 January 2011 9:11PM

    HushedSilence:

    Also, who wrote them and why are they Palestinian only? where is the Israeli version?

    The Israeli version hasn't been leaked, sweetie. And after what the Israelis did to Vanunu, can you wonder why?

  • TexasRed

    23 January 2011 9:11PM

    "There are no exposés of hypocrisy or double talk; on the contrary, the Israelis' statements inside the negotiating room echo what they have consistently said outside it.":

    So the Israelis have been consistently telling the truth and the 'palestinians' have been consistently lying.

    The response of the left; blame Israel.

  • VancouverTheory

    23 January 2011 9:11PM

    @bedebyes

    You don't have to go back so far, they're stealing Indian land today.

    Yes, there is an excellent piece from David Suzuki on Corporations putting oil pipelines through native lands with help of the Canadian Government, the US does it too. Being part Native myself I can tell you that it would be nice if to boot we didn't have more desert Abrahamic religions rammed down our throats though.

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