Ten years’ worth of previously secret documents on the Mideast peace process from the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah have been leaked to Al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera has been releasing them from Sunday through Wednesday as a series of “revelations.” They were also released by the center-left London Guardian newspaper. The precise source of the 1600 documents was not disclosed, but it’s thought that they were leaked from the private archives of chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat.
Saeb Erekat – angry at al-Jazeera
I listened to much of the commentary on Al-Jazeera English television, as I’ve been reporting daily on my web site.
Not surprisingly, the al-Jazeera commentary was very hostile to Israel and the United States. But what WAS surprising was that the commentary was even more hostile to the Palestinian Authority.
The major parties were portrayed as followed:
* America was portrayed not as an “honest broker,” but as Israel’s chief lawyer and defender. America was also portrayed as forcing the PA to do things that were not in the interest of the Palestinian people.
* Israel was portrayed more in disgust than anger. It was said repeatedly that while the PA made several concessions during the peace negotiations, Israel refused to make even one concession. Not one commentator that I heard mentioned Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.
* The Palestinian Authority was portrayed as collaborators with Israel, and working against the interests of the Palestinian people. The military arm, Fatah, was portrayed as torturers and murderers of Palestinian people.
* Hamas was portrayed only in a positive manner, as Israels’ victim, and as the true representatives of the Palestinian people. I did not hear anything negative about Hamas, and terrorist attacks were only mentioned glancingly.
On Wednesday, al-Jazeera did discuss the question of bias, and read a statement claiming that they were totally impartial. That doesn’t even remotely pass the smell test.
The result is that there’s a major split growing between the Palestinian authority and al-Jazeera — and their sponsor country, Qatar.
PA president Mahmoud Abbas was given a hero’s welcome when he arrived in Ramallah on Tuesday, with hundreds of demonstrators criticizing al-Jazeera for publishing fake documents.
Chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat also got a hero’s welcome in a rally. He was loudly and bitterly critical of al-Jazeera for “dirty tactics,” and the “worst smear campaign in the history of journalism.” Erekat also accused Qatar, al-Jazeera’s sponsor, of funding and supporting Hamas against Fatah.
As before, American and Israeli officials kept their mouths shut, except to answer questions by saying that the Palestine Papers have not yet been verified.
Here’s a summary of the major points made by commentators that I’ve been reporting on my web site in detail since Sunday:
* The PA was criticized for making too many concessions to Israel — giving away chunks of Jerusalem and limiting the right of return of refugees in Lebanon and Jordan. This was described as a betrayal of the Palestinian people.
* Commentators said that America was completely one-sided, favoring Israel. Several commentators said that President Obama was worse than President Bush, because he was unwilling to honor previous commitments made by the Bush Administration in conjunction with the 2003 “Roadmap to Mideast Peace.”
* There was an extremely emotional issue raised over land swaps. This is the proposal that’s been openly discussed for years that Israel would be able to annex part of Jerusalem and the West Bank, in exchange for giving up some Israeli terroritory to the new Palestinian state. However, a particularly bitter discussion centered on the fact that the land that Israel would give up would be villages occupied by Palestinian citizens of Israel, and if the land swaps were completed, then Israel would almost be a purely Jewish state, forcing loyal Palestinian citizens to leave.
* The PA was furiously criticized for collaborating with the Israelis against Hamas. It shouldn’t be a surprise that this happened, given that the PA and the Israelis have each fought individual wars with Hamas in the last five years.
* Britain was also a target of the commentators, since the administration of former Prime Minister Tony Blair had approved funding to help the Fatah security forces. Some of that money went to the Palestinian Preventative Security Services (PPSS) and the General Intelligence Service, Fatah organizations that have been accused of torture. So Britain is being accused of supporting torture.
* One commentator was angry that during the negotiations, Israel said that they would not agree to have a Palestinian state unless the Palestinians promised that they would have no army or air force.
* Another commentator was angry that the Palestinian Authority has been preventing Imams from providing Jihadist teachings in the mosques of the West Bank.
* The PA was bitterly criticized because Israel had forewarned them about the coming January, 2009, Israeli war into Gaza, but then the PA didn’t warn Hamas. However, another commentator, Patrick N Theros, US ambassador to Qatar, did point out that everyone knew that a war was coming. That’s certainly true — even I knew.
* The bitter issue on Wednesday is that the PA collaborated with the US in getting the UN Security Council to delay a vote on the Goldstone Report, a UN report that found Israel guilty of war crimes during the Gaza war. (Hamas was also found guilty, to a lesser extent.) Theros said that the reason the US wanted a delay was because a UN vote would distract from the peace process.
Several commentators pronounced, with great contempt and bitterness, that the “peace process” was completely dead. Well, duh! I’ve been saying that for years. I wrote about this subject in 2003, when President Bush announced the Mideast Roadmap to Peace. (See “Mideast Roadmap – Will it bring peace?”) As I wrote at the time, and have repeated many times since then, the Arabs and the Jews will be re-fighting the bloody war that took place after the partitioning of Palestine in 1948 and the creation of the state of Israel. This is an absolute certainty, and there’s nothing that any of the players can do to prevent it. All the different negotiators can do is play their parts like actors in a scripted play that can end in only one way.
Despite al-Jazeera’s repeated breathless claims of “explosive revelations,” I don’t believe that there’s much that wasn’t previously known, or at least strongly suspected. But seeing it all in print and in one place can still harden positions, especially between Hamas and Fatah, and by extension, between Israel and Iran. At a time of increasing turmoil in the Mideast region, including political chaos in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Lebanon, the release of the Palestine Papers can only add to the turmoil.
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