It will be a few days before anyone can offer a thorough reaction or analysis of the over 1,600 confidential documents, known as the Palestine Papers, leaked to Al Jazeera about Israeli-Palestinian negotiations spanning a decade. But an initial reaction is warranted to the central revelation made in these documents, namely the unprecedented territorial compromises made by Palestinian negotiators on East Jerusalem and turned down by Israel.
To set the proper context for discussing Jerusalem, it's important to understand the legal framework under which the city falls: West Jerusalem is Israeli, part of the state created in 1948; and East Jerusalem is Palestinian, illegally occupied and annexed by Israel in contravention to international law and UN resolutions. Without a single country recognizing this annexation, Israel's takeover of East Jerusalem is regarded as illegitimate by the international community. If international law were to be strictly implemented, Israel would be required to completely withdraw from all of East Jerusalem.
The peace process is based on international law, but it is actually more flexible, allowing some wiggle room to take into account the demographic reality, facts on the ground, and some political and religious sensitivities. This flexibility makes perfect sense if both parties were negotiation in good faith. The problem here is that Israel has not been doing that. Throughout the peace process, Israel treated the negotiations as a charade while it continued to unilaterally impose its reality on the ground, rapidly expanding illegal settlements around East Jerusalem, destroying Palestinian neighborhoods, and driving Palestinians from their homes. Israel is fundamentally changing the very character of the city in order to minimize the amount of land it ends up having to give the Palestinians. But the longer this process continues, the less likely will the Palestinians be willing to accept (and rightly so) whatever unviable patches of territory left for them as a state. As Israel's former foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami himself acknowledged, large settlements like Ma'ale Adumim (East of Jerusalem) make Palestinian territorial contiguity "very difficult to imagine."
The American stated position (though not policy) has been quite good, sharply critical of Israel's policies in the Occupied Territories. In the words of Hillary Clinton:
The position of the United States on settlements has not changed and will not change. Like every American administration for decades, we do not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity. We believe their continued expansion is corrosive not only to peace efforts and two-state solution, but to Israel's future itself.
What's new in the latest leak is that, apparently, Palestinian negotiators have privately conceded large parts of East Jerusalem to Israel, including areas where Israeli settlement expansion continues to the public protest of the Palestinian leadership. Much of the immediate reactions to this revelation have focused on the implications for the Palestinian Authority in light of these major and unpopular concessions for nothing in return. But the other half of that story, namely Israel's rejection of those concessions as insufficient, is more worthy of attention for us here in the US.
In a live interview on Al Jazeera a few hours ago, former Israeli foreign minister Ben-Ami reacted to the detailed nature of these far-reaching concessions by saying "the Israeli side is clearly taken aback by the seriousness of the Palestinian position," and expressed disappointment with the negative Israeli reaction to it. The first thing this revelation does is lay rest to the silly Israeli mantra of "there is no Palestinian partner for peace." Indeed, it's looking quite the opposite at this point. If they cannot even react positively to these far-reaching concessions, then what has long been clear to experienced analysts ought to now be clear to all observers: the current right-wing coalition government in Israel is incapable of voluntarily achieving a viable two-state solution. For any future negotiations to bare the potential of being fruitful, a major shift in the domestic, regional, or international equilibrium is required. Even a subtle shift in US policy could deliver the needed shakeup to the current deadlock, though Hillary Clinton's recent displeasure with a possible UN resolution seeking what American diplomatic pressure and military incentives have failed to achieve (a halt in settlement expansion) is no promising sign.
In the meantime, Palestinians are not doubling down on the US-led peace process to deliver an end to the occupation. Instead, they are seeking supportive resolutions from the United Nations, recognition from the international community, and are carrying out direct non-violent resistance to the occupation in collaboration with Israeli peace activists, and boycotting the occupation and settlement products. Whether the US will to continue to be relevant to the struggle to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict depends on whether it is willing to shift its policy towards a more balanced and practical approach. That begins with the US vote in the anticipated UN resolution on settlements possibly in the coming weeks.
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I am heartened that the Palestinian leadership is finally coming to private acceptance of reality; millions of distant descendants of those who fled the Arab attacks on Israel, are not ever going to be allowed to move to Israel (where most of them have never lived) after the peace treaty, Jerusalem, which under Arab rule was trashed, is going to remain mostly under Jewish rule, with Muslim and Christian holy sites protected as Jewish sites never were under Muslim rule. This gives me some hope, even if reality angers the Omars of the world.
No way back.
An entire edifice of anti-Israeli demonisation definitively consigned to the scrap heap, never to be recycled again. This is the uncompromising message that comes out of yesterday’s revelations on Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. To the horror of a European political intelligentsia which has been steadfast to the point of fanatical in its opposition to Israeli “settlements” in east Jerusalem, the Palestinian leadership itself, we now know, has long accepted that the vast majority of Israeli settlements can be considered legitimate and would become part of Israel under any reasonable peace agreement.
This is utterly devastating since it simultaneously shows that everyone from the British Foreign Office and the BBC to the European Commission and the continent’s passionately anti-Israeli NGO community have been adopting a position which was significantly more uncompromising on “settlements” than the Palestinian leadership itself, and also that that same Palestinian leadership had accepted that the so called 1967 “borders” — the gold standard for practically every anti-Israeli polemic around — are irrelevant to the prospects of a lasting peace.
Egyptian newspaper al-Mesryoon is being quoted as saying that Abbas asked Egypt to intervene with Qatar in order to stop what he considered an attempt to tarnish the image of the Palestinian Authority before Arab public opinion, despite the fact that he has briefed all Arab countries on all developments in negotiations with the Israelis at all stages.
Sources reported that Egypt expressed support for the position of the Palestinian Authority in seeking ways to contain the crisis.
An Egyptian official, Rakha Ahmed Hassan, told the newspaper that Arab parties, including Egypt, might intervene in order to prevent the escalation of tension between Qatar and the PA.
The implication, of course, is that there isn't even a pretext of freedom of the press in the Arab world. It is simply common knowledge that a government can dictate what any newspaper may or may not publish.
But it's a cultural thing. To criticize it betrays Western imperialistic thinking about non-Arab concepts such as "freedom."
"Calls once more upon Israel, as the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, to rescind its previous measures and to desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status and geographical nature and materially affecting the demographic composition of the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and, in particular, not to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the occupied Arab territories"
The word "Palestinian" is also notably absent.
"According to another report, Lieberman said the prisoners should be drowned in the Dead Sea and he would provide the buses to take them there.
MKs Jamal Zahalka (Balad) and Talab A-Sana and Abdelmalek Dahamsha (United Arab List) blasted Lieberman.
"How can you suggest transferring thousands of Palestinian prisoners to the Dead Sea and drowning them there?" Dahamsha asked in a debate on traffic accidents. Lieberman retorted that MK Dahamsha visited an Arab murdered in Afula by Palestinian terrorists.
The Arab Knesst members were furious. MK Talab A-Sana said "that's the ultimate fascist statement, shame on you."
Lieberman told MK Zahalka "Let me tell you openly. As far as I'm concerned you're much worse than Arafat and Abu Mazen. If it was up to me you'd be sitting in jail, at best."
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/lieberman-blasted-for-suggesting-drowning-palestinian-prisoners-1.93554
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1695871/United-Nations-Resolution-181
That will be the first order of business when Palestine declares itself a state.
Israel should sue the living God out of the PLO.
With my blessings.
Let's deal with the present shall we?
No one believes anything is going back to 1947.
Hopefully, our government does the right thing and, there is the re-creation of Palestine.
However, what will be most interesting to watch over the coming days and weeks will be the reaction of the Israeli and Arab "man-in-the-street".
I believe that the Israelis were not aware of the concessions the Arabs were offering (privately, at least). Depending on the Arab response, we may well see a popular push for increased concessions on the part of the Israeli government by the Israeli electorate. If, however, the Arab street rises in violent protest, confirming the current Israeli belief that its destruction remains the desired, eventual goal, the more extreme elements may well succeed in blocking further progress.
Based on what we know, (this is a crucial disclaimer, since we don't know what we don't know,) a initiating conciliatory gesture on the part of the Israelis is very much needed at this point.
http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2011/01/19/serving-up-palestine-one-slice-at-a-time/
Seems the Palestinians are faced with the same choices the Blacks of South Africa did, live quietly as second class people living in Bantustans, or live unquietly as second class people fighting for justice.