The “peace negotiations” were a deceptive farce whereby biased terms were unilaterally imposed by Israel and systematically endorsed by the US and EU. Far from enabling a negotiated and fair end to the conflict, the pursuit of the Oslo process deepened Israeli segregationist policies and justified the tightening of the security control imposed on the Palestinian population, as well as its geographical fragmentation. Far from preserving the land on which to build a state, it has tolerated the intensification of the colonisation of the Palestinian territory.
Palestine Papers
Yossi Alpher: “At this point it’s all spin designed to fend off pressures… The object of the exercise is to gain a day, or a week, or a month, before having to come up with some sort of new spin.”
Massive public protests continue to sweep the Middle East and North Africa in countries including Bahrain, Libya, Yemen and Iran—many being met with violent government crackdowns. Democracy Now! speaks to Marwan Bishara, senior political analyst at Al Jazeera English, and MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky.
PASSIA director Mahdi Abdul Hadi: “It is now much clearer to Palestinians that they are living in a prison and that the PA leaders are there only to negotiate the terms of our imprisonment.”
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Wednesday in an interview with the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television that a U.S. citizen, who worked in the U.S. State Department, and a British citizen, a former MI6 and EU official, are the ones responsible for leaking the so-called ‘Palestine papers.’
Ma’aleh Adumim Mayor Benny Kasriel has demanded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explain reports that he had secretly promised the US that Israel would not build new neighborhoods in E1, a controversial area which connects Jerusalem to the nearby settlement.
Both Palestinian rivals know how to use the resilience and creativity of their people in the face of the daily torture that is foreign rule. But they do not help translate this personal and collective stamina into a strategy of unarmed popular struggle.
A summary of important articles and documents covering revelations of The Palestine Papers.
A selection of video reports from Al-Jazeera’s comprehensive coverage of the leaked Israeli-Palestinian negotiations documents.
The “Palestine Papers” demand a serious re-evaluation of two lingering, erroneous assumptions made by many Western observers: 1) the US’ self-proclaimed role as honest broker; 2) the assumption that peace talks have fallen into abeyance chiefly because of the election nearly two years ago of Netanyahu’s rightwing Israeli government. The Americans’ goal was to strong-arm him into bringing into his coalition Tzipi Livni who is widely regarded as the most credible Israeli advocate for peace. However, Livni, previously Mr Olmert’s foreign minister, emerges in the leaked papers as an inflexible negotiator, dismissive of the huge concessions being made by the Palestinians.
IOA Editor: Indeed, as we’ve said since the release of The Palestine Papers.
Livni to Ahmed Qurei and Saeb Erekat: “Israel was established to become a national home for Jews from all over the world. The Jew gets the citizenship as soon as he steps in Israel, and therefore don’t say anything about the nature of Israel… The basis for the creation of the state of Israel is that it was created for the Jewish people. Your state will be the answer to all Palestinians including refugees. Putting an end to claims means fulfilling national rights for all.”
Al-Jazeera TV , the Guardian: PA agreed to concede almost all of East Jerusalem to Israel, accept Israeli demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and much more.
At a meeting in November 2007, [Livni] told Qureia that she believed Palestinians saw settlement building as meaning “Israel takes more land [so] that the Palestinian state will be impossible”; that “the Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we’ll say that is impossible, we already have the land and we cannot create the state”. She conceded that it had been “the policy of the government for a really long time”.
IOA Editor: US-backed Israeli rejectionism, delivered by Tzipi Livni — generally regarded as Israel’s “more flexible” opposition leader. [Ha!] Nothing that we didn’t already know, other than the details on the specific Palestinian concessions. Even more interesting is Qureia’s March 2008 comment to Condoleezza Rice “You bring back life to the region when you come.” After Israel’s mass killing campaign in Lebanon and the US slaughter Iraq, it would have been far more accurate to state “you bring death to the region.”
Al-Jazeera TV , the Guardian: PA agreed to concede almost all of East Jerusalem to Israel, accept Israeli demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and much more.
Chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat: “This is the first time in Palestinian-Israeli history in which such a [concession] is officially made.” … But the offer was rejected out of hand by Israel because it did not include … Ma’ale Adumim as well as Har Homa and several other [settlements] 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.
IOA Editor: US-backed Israeli rejectionism, delivered by Tzipi Livni — generally regarded as Israel’s “more flexible” opposition leader. [Ha!] Nothing that we didn’t already know, other than the details on the specific Palestinian concessions.
