Palestine Papers – A nail in the coffin of the two-state solution
The
publication of the Palestine Papers by Al-Jazeera, and by The
Guardian, has come as a great shock to those who believed that Israel and/or the US ever sincerely sought to bring peace to Palestine through the 2-state solution
that was agreed in Oslo. Indeed, they have made it clear that they are only
interested in bringing peace by eliminating the Palestinian population
altogether.
Whether through sincere belief that
US imperialism would seriously pursue a viable 2-state solution, or through
anxiety to get hold of US financial support, or to avoid Israeli military
intervention and economic sanctions, the Palestinian Authority, after the death
of Yasser Arafat, renounced all violent resistance to Israel’s aggressive
expansion into more and more Palestinian territory. Worse, it became an
accomplice to the Israeli and US war of terror against the Palestinian
resistance.
The
Palestinian Authority as an accomplice of imperialism and Zionism
The Papers show that there was an
intimate level of covert cooperation between the Israeli security forces and
the Palestinian Authority, with British intelligence forces offering a secret
plan to crush Hamas, and Israel providing tear gas and training in crowd
control. The Palestinian negotiator, Erekat, was happy to reassure the US representative, George Mitchell, for instance, that the Palestinian Authority had been successful
in arresting 3,700 members of armed groups, summoning a further 4,700 for
questioning and confiscating 1,100 weapons in 2009. It is hardly a secret that
in the West Bank, hundreds of Hamas and other activists have routinely been
detained without trial in recent years and subjected to widely documented human
rights abuses, i.e., torture.
Israel asked the PA in 2005 to kill a
militant (Hassan al-Madhoun, aged 32, an al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade commander)
ostensibly in retaliation for a suicide bombing effected by Islamic Jihad who
had killed 5 Israelis, but in fact because he was resisting the PA’s efforts to
turn the Al-Aqsa brigades into a tool for suppressing Hamas. Although the PA
demurred at itself organising the fatal attack, the militant in question died
the following month in an Israeli drone attack on his car. While it is remotely
possible that the PA was not implicated in this, it is noteworthy that this
murder was discussed by Israel with the PA. It is hard to escape the
conclusion that in all probability someone in the PA tipped Israel the wink as to where Hassan-al-Madhoun could be found. Erekat openly admitted that
in order to keep order in the West Bank the Palestine Authority had “had to
kill Palestinians”.
Worse is the fact that WikiLeaks US
diplomatic cables reported that in June 2009 Ehud Barak told a US Congressional
delegation that Israel “had consulted with Egypt and Fatah prior to
operation Cast Lead, asking if they were willing to assume control of Gaza once
Israel defeated Hamas”. Although it seems that neither was willing to
undertake that particular dirty role, there was no public denunciation of Israel’s dastardly plans. Both Egypt and Fatah kept quiet. In fact, so far has the
Palestinian Authority abandoned the interests of the Palestinian people that it
2009 Erekat was heard to complain to George Mitchell that not enough was being
done to seal off the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza!
After the criminal war on Gaza, the Goldstone report was published at the instance of the Security Council of the
United Nations exposing the war crimes that Israel had committed during that
war. The Papers reveal that the PA held up the Goldstone report for some time,
cooperating with US officials in an attempt to postpone reference to Israeli
war crimes (though the PA later reversed its decision).
Obama worse
than Bush
The Palestine Papers make clear that
while the PA was ostensibly condemning settlement expansion by the Israelis, in
private and behind closed doors its negotiators had already offered to concede
some of these territories to Israel. One example of this is Ramat Shlomo in Jerusalem, where a furore arose in 2009 when US Senator Joe Biden was visiting Israel, because the Jerusalem municipality chose just that moment to announce the approval of 1,600 new housing tenders. Under pressure from the US, who howled that this was undermining peace negotiations, Israel delayed the construction, which
to this day has not restarted. Nevertheless, the Palestine Papers show that
this was all a charade designed to restore the US’s severely damaged
credibility in the Middle East, and to give the impression that Obama was a sea
change from George Bush. The fact is, however, that Palestinian negotiators
had already agreed to allow Israel to annexe this settlement and nearly all
other illegal construction in the Jerusalem area. This offer was made at talks
on 15 June 2008 between Rice, Livni, Ahmed Qurei (ex PA prime minister) and
Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator. Although it might be thought that
the offer lapsed because the Israelis did not accept it, in fact this is not
what has ever happened to concessions offered by the Palestinians. In
practice, all Palestinian concessions that are rejected are “banked”,
i.e., accepted but nothing given in return. They merely become a base from
which to demand further concessions.
Obama has as a result of the
publication of the Palestine Papers been shown to be, if anything, even worse
than George Bush:
“Confidential Palestinian documents
leaked to Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based television network, suggest that Mr Obama
retreated from a promise that territory occupied by Israel after the Six Day
War of 1967 should become the basis for a future Palestinian state.
“The documents, part of a second
tranche of the “Palestine Papers” released by Al Jazeera …, indicate that Mr
Obama’s change of heart was the result of Israeli pressure.
“That fact alone is likely to
damage Mr Obama’s carefully-cultivated image as a friend of the Arab world.
“According to the papers,
Condoleezza Rice, President George W Bush’s secretary of state, explicitly
endorsed the use of 1967 borders as a basis for future negotiations on dividing
territory in the months after the Annapolis peace conference in 2007.
“The gesture was a hugely
significant one for the Palestinians as it acknowledged the broad outlines of
the state they craved.
“It was accepted that adjustments
to the border would have to be made to allow Israel to annex Jewish settlements
in the West Bank in return for land in Israel.
“But Palestinian hopes that the
matter had been settled were dashed when Mr Obama came to power.
“Records of a meeting in October
2009 between Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, and George
Mitchell, Mr Obama’s Middle East envoy, show the Americans wavering.
“The minutes indicate that Mr
Erekat urged the United States publicly to declare its support for ‘two states
along the ’67 border with agreed swaps’, a commitment Ms Rice only made in
private.
“Mr Mitchell noted that the US had come under fierce Israeli pressure to resist such a move, but promised to pursue the matter.
“The next day, however, he told Mr
Erekat to drop the subject.
“’Again, I tell you that President
Obama does not accept prior decisions by Bush,’ the documents show Mr Mitchell
as saying. ‘Don’t use this because it can hurt you.’
“Mr Erekat seems stunned by the
warning, replying: ‘But this was an agreement with Secretary Rice… For God’s
sake, she said to put it on the record.’
“Many Palestinians are likely to
respond bitterly to the irony that President Bush, who was widely hated in the
Arab world, made them a much valued if unexpected undertaking only for Mr
Obama, whose election they almost universally cheered, to take it away again” (Adrian Blomfield, ‘Middle East peace talks leaks: Obama
‘backed out of land promise to Palestinians’, Telegraph, 25 Jan
2011).
Obama’s position is all the more
shocking in that all that Obama was being asked to do was to give his backing
to what is already international law. Every single encroachment by Israel on the Occupied Territories is a breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention. To return to the
Palestinians the whole of the Occupied Territories is merely to carry out an
obligation of that Convention. What Obama has done, therefore, is to
demonstrate that at Israel’s bidding he is entirely prepared to act illegally
even by the canons of bourgeois international law.
Fatah
leadership tries to sell Palestine, but the Zionists won’t buy
Faced with a clear Israeli intent,
fully backed by the US, to annexe further Palestinian territory, or even all of
it, permanently, the Palestinian Authority quite lost its head, forgot about
Palestinians’ legal rights, never mind the question of justice, and made offer
after offer to hand over Palestinian land to Israel, only to have all these
offers rejected. As Hamas representative, Osama Hamdan, writing in the Guardian
of 26 January 2011, quite rightly pointed out: “Had Palestinian offers been
accepted by the Israelis, it would have been the biggest act of treason in the
region’s history.
“The Palestinian negotiators
violated the national consensus achieved in 2006 when, in response to an appeal
for national unity from Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons, various
Palestinian factions agreed on a political programme based on full Israeli
withdrawal to pre-1967 lines, dismantling of all settlements and the right of
return for all refugees.”
Every bit of Israel has been stolen from the Palestinians. Until 2006, Hamas was not prepared to
concede to Israel any of the stolen land. It did, however, in 2006 reluctantly
agree to go along with the 2-state solution on the basis mentioned above in
order that Palestinians should be able to present a unified voice. The
Palestine Papers demonstrate that behind everybody’s backs, the Palestinian
authority was negotiating:
(a) to hand over to Israel a further 119 square kilometres of
Palestinian land without receiving any land in return, and to exchange certain
settlements built illegally on Palestinian land for arid, undeveloped land on
the northern boundary of Gaza;
(b) to hand over to Israel virtually the whole of Jerusalem, including
all illegal settlements except one, and including the Palestinian areas of Gilo
and Sheikh Jarrah, leaving the Palestinians with only a few isolated areas
separated off from such of the occupied territories as Israel did deign to
return to the Palestinians, in such a way that East Jerusalem could never
realistically be the capital of the new Palestinian state as had been envisaged
by the Oslo Accords;
(c) to hand over Haram-al-Sharif, including the al-Aqsa mosque (the
third most holy Islamic site) to the control of an “international committee”
consisting of the US and its friends (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc.).
(d) to limit the number of Palestinian refugees granted the right to
return to 10,000 over 10 years (out of some 5-6 million!).
However, it has to be admitted that
the PA’s treachery has had the merit of demonstrating to the whole world that
there is no way that Israel is ever going to be satisfied with less than the
total elimination of Palestine. The concessions offered were way beyond
anybody had any right to expect, and yet they were still turned down because
they weren’t enough for the Israelis.
The sticking point was supposedly
that Israel (backed by the US which instructed it on no account to give up
Ma’ale Admin) was insisting on annexation by Israel of the large
internationally illegal West Bank settlements of Ma’ale Admin, Ariel, Ephrat
and Giv’at Ze’ev, and the Jerusalem settlement of Har Homa, which even for
Erekat was a step too far, since these settlements (with the exception of Har
Homa) are located deep in the West Bank, and their inclusion in Israel is
incompatible with the territorial contiguity of a future Palestinian state.
Ariel, for example, is nearly halfway to Jordan. We have no doubt, however,
that if every one of these settlements had been conceded, another sticking
point would be reached.
Venetia Rainey, writing in The
First Post (‘The Palestine Papers: Why the leak is so serious’),
could not but conclude that “The leaked documents … suggest that a 2-state
solution could be an impossible aim. The offers made by the Palestinian
negotiators are already way beyond what most Palestinians would accept, while
Israeli officials still say it isn’t enough. No matter how far each side
stretches, they can’t seem to meet in the middle. These documents bring that
home for once and for all.”
Even Robert Grenier, former Director
of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center, says: “The overwhelming conclusion one
draws from this record is that the process
for a two-state solution is essentially over”.
Erekat said it all when he remarked
to George Mitchell, the Obama’s representative in the Middle East: “What
good am I if I’m the joke of my wife … They can’t even give me a 6 month
freeze to give me a figleaf”.
The future
There can be no question that the
Palestinian Authority has lost all credibility as a negotiator on behalf of the
Palestinian people, let alone as the sole negotiator on their behalf! This has
strengthened the hand of those who are calling for a reconciliation between
Hamas and Fatah. There have been demonstrations in the West Bank against the
Palestinian Authority, even though demonstrations are banned and are dispersed
violently. According to Human Rights Watch, there was a
demonstration on 5 February in Ramallah’s Manara Square in which hundreds of
Palestinians filled the square, chanting slogans supporting demonstrators in Egypt, as well as slogans critical of the PA. “The chants included, ‘The people want an
end to Oslo’, referring to the agreement that created the PA …”
and, “‘The people want
an end to the division’, referring to the
conflict between the West Bank and Hamas-controlled Gaza”. Events have prompted the PA, no doubt with advice from the US and Israel, to call its elections (now two years overdue!) for next September. However, with
hundreds of activists for the main opposition, Hamas, languishing in jail,
there would not be any prospect of a fair election, and Hamas is refusing to
stand unless a reconciliation is effected first.
However, with the seismic shifts in
the balance of forces currently taking place in the Middle East, that have
already swept aside the tyrannical pro-imperialist regimes of Tunisia and Egypt
and are seriously threatening other US puppets in the region too (e.g. Bahrain
and Yemen), it is impossible at this point in time to predict what will be the
outcome for Palestine in the immediate future. It is a time of exceptional
opportunity in the fight for justice, and we have every expectation that the
Palestinian people will seize it with both hands.