Palestinian negotiators secretly agreed to accept Israel's annexation of all but one E.J. settlement

[Magda Hassan]

The Palestine Papers: Secret Papers Reveal Slow Death of Middle East Peace Process

Massive new leak lifts lid on negotiations PLO offered up key settlements in East Jerusalem Concessions made on refugees and Holy sites

by Seumas Milne and Ian Black
The biggest leak of confidential documents in the history of the Middle East conflict has revealed that Palestinian negotiators secretly agreed to accept Israel's annexation of all but one of the settlements built illegally in occupied East Jerusalem. This unprecedented proposal was one of a string of concessions that will cause shockwaves among Palestinians and in the wider Arab world.
The Palestine papers reveal the offer of concessions by Palestinian peace negotiators on areas such as the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount holy sites in Jerusalem. Photograph: Awad Awad/AFP/Getty Images
A cache of thousands of pages of confidential Palestinian records covering more than a decade of negotiations with Israel and the US has been obtained by al-Jazeera TV and shared exclusively with the Guardian. The papers provide an extraordinary and vivid insight into the disintegration of the 20-year peace process, which is now regarded as all but dead.The documents - many of which will be published by the Guardian over the coming days - also reveal:

• The scale of confidential concessions offered by Palestinian negotiators, including on the highly sensitive issue of the right of return of Palestinian refugees.
  
• How Israeli leaders privately asked for some Arab citizens to be transferred to a new Palestinian state.
  
• The intimate level of covert co-operation between Israeli security forces and the Palestinian Authority.
  
• The central role of British intelligence in drawing up a secret plan to crush Hamas in the Palestinian territories.
  
• How Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders were privately tipped off about Israel's 2008-9 war in Gaza.
  

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.
Most controversially, they also proposed a joint committee to take over the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount holy sites in Jerusalem's Old City - the neuralgic issue that helped sink the Camp David talks in 2000 after Yasser Arafat refused to concede sovereignty around the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques.
The offers were made in 2008-9, in the wake of President George Bush's Annapolis conference, and were privately hailed by the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, as giving Israel "the biggest Yerushalayim [the Hebrew name for Jerusalem] in history" in order to resolve the world's most intractable conflict. Israeli leaders, backed by the US government, said the offers were inadequate.
Intensive efforts to revive talks by the Obama administration foundered last year over Israel's refusal to extend a 10-month partial freeze on settlement construction. Prospects are now uncertain amid increasing speculation that a negotiated two-state solution to the conflict is no longer attainable - and fears of a new war.
Many of the 1,600 leaked documents - drawn up by PA officials and lawyers working for the British-funded PLO negotiations support unit and include extensive verbatim transcripts of private meetings - have been independently authenticated by the Guardian and corroborated by former participants in the talks and intelligence and diplomatic sources.
The Guardian's coverage is supplemented by WikiLeaks cables, emanating from the US consulate in Jerusalem and embassy in Tel Aviv. Israeli officials also kept their own records of the talks, which may differ from the confidential Palestinian accounts.
The concession in May 2008 by Palestinian leaders to allow Israel to annex the settlements in East Jerusalem - including Gilo, which is a current focus of controversy after Israeli authorities gave the go-ahead for 1,400 new homes - has never been made public before.
All settlements built on territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war are illegal under international law, but the Jerusalem homes are routinely described, and perceived, by Israel as municipal "neighbourhoods". Israeli governments have consistently sought to annex the largest settlements as part of a peace deal - and came close to doing so at Camp David.
Erekat told Israeli leaders in 2008: "This is the first time in Palestinian-Israeli history in which such a suggestion is officially made." No such concession had been made at Camp David. But the offer was rejected out of hand by Israel because it did not include a big settlement near the city Ma'ale Adumim as well as Har Homa and several others 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, "and probably it was not easy for you to think about it, but I really appreciate it".
The overall impression that emerges from the documents, which stretch from 1999 to 2010, is of the weakness and growing desperation of PA leaders as failure to reach agreement or even halt all settlement temporarily undermines their credibility in relation to their Hamas rivals; the papers also reveal the unyielding confidence of Israeli negotiators and the often dismissive attitude of US politicians towards Palestinian representatives.
Palestinian and Israeli officials both point out that any position in negotiations is subject to the principle that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" and therefore is invalid without a overarching deal. But PA leaders are likely to be embarrassed by the revelation of private concessions that go far beyond what much of their population would regard as acceptable - particularly since Mahmoud Abbas's mandate as Palestinian president expired in 2009.
The PA, set up as a transitional administration after the 1993 Oslo agreement between Israel and the PLO, is under pressure from a disaffected Palestinian public and from Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006 and has controlled the Gaza Strip since its violent takeover in 2007.
Unlike the PLO, Hamas rejects negotiations with Israel, except for a long-term ceasefire, and refuses to recognise it. Its founding charter also contains antisemitic elements. Supported by Iran and Syria, it is sanctioned as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and the EU, despite pressure for it to be included in a wider political process.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/23-10

[Jan Klimkowski]

This simply confirms what we already know: that Abbas is the quisling leader of the quisling Palestinian Authority.

[Jan Klimkowski]

A proposal for ethnic cleansing and mass deportation.

Imagine the howls of outrage and condemnation if the USA proposed that Jews be deported to South America as part of offiical peace negotiation proposals.

Palestinians condemn US plan to settle refugees in South America

Suggestion revealed in Palestine papers clashes with refugees' fundamental right to go home, say Palestinian groups

Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 25 January 2011 12.09 GMT

Palestinians have expressed shock and dismay at the US suggestion to settle Palestinian refugees in Argentina and Chile rather than let them return to ancestral land in Israel.

Representatives of the Palestinian diaspora said the plan to ship displaced Palestinians from the Middle East to a new homeland across the Atlantic clashed with their fundamental right to go home.

"It's completely unacceptable. It contradicts our inalienable right to return to our own homeland," said Daniel Jadue, vice-president of Chile's Palestine Federation. "That right cannot be renounced. To make this suggestion shows the mediation was not honest. It was clearly tilted in favour of Israel. This is extremely grave."

Condoleezza Rice, who was secretary of state in the Bush administration, floated the idea at a meeting on 28 June 2008 with US, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in Berlin, according to minutes of the encounter obtained by al-Jazeera and shared with the Guardian.

The suggestion dumbfounded South America's Palestinians a largely Christian community which emigrated in waves over the past century and settled across the region, especially in Chile which is said to be home to more than 200,000.

Chile's Palestinians would welcome compatriots who chose to settle in the Andes, said Jadue. "If a Palestinian accepted to come here that would be their right and we would show solidarity." But that did not justify a US proposal to funnel refugees from the Middle East to reduce pressure on Israel to give up land, he said. "That's wrong."

Tilda Rabi, president of the Federation of Palestinian Organisations in Argentina, said the proposal violated the UN's affirmation of refugees' right to return home. "This is an extension of a long campaign of ethnic cleansing, of clearing people from their own homelands." She doubted many refugees would have accepted such an offer. "In the camps people still have keys to the homes they left behind."

It is unclear whether the Bush administration lobbied Argentina and Chile to take Palestinians. The foreign ministries in Buenos Aires and Santiago did not respond to email and phone queries.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said it received no such request. "UNRWA has never been approached by any government to assist with the movement of refugees to South America," said a spokesman, Chris Gunness. "If such an offer was made refugees could accept or reject it," he said. "It would be their choice."

Hillary Clinton, Rice's successor as secretary of state, played down the importance of the documents in her first comments on the leak last night.

"I don't think it comes as any surprise what the issues are between the Palestinians and the Israelis," she told reporters in Mexico. "They have been well known for 20 years or more. They are difficult issues. They do not lend themselves easily to compromise."

However, the state department spokesman Philip Crowley earlier acknowledged that the disclosure would have an impact on efforts to get peace talks restarted.

"We don't deny that this release will, at least for a time, make the situation more difficult than it already was," he said. "None of this changes our understanding of what is at stake, or what needs to be done. We continue to believe a framework agreement is both possible and necessary. We continue to work with and engage the parties."

The United Nations special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process, Robert Serry, said some of the interpretation of the documents conveyed an "inaccurate impression". The Palestinian negotiators were committed to reaching a deal in the interests of the Palestinian people, he said.

"At this crucial time, I would urge both parties to show their readiness for a negotiated peace based on a two-state solution, and to deliver on the ground. It is to the genuine credit of the Palestinian leadership that they are doing so."

Israel radio reported that Nabil Shaath, a member of the Palestinian negotiating team, said the documents released by al-Jazeera were authentic, unofficial and did not obligate the Palestinian side.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan...th-america

[Peter Lemkin]

Only surprise is they didn't follow Hitler's original idea of Madagascar....... Let me guess, they were thinking of the Atacama Desert in Chile and the Southern barren lands of Patagonia....how nice of the U.S. [Experts on shipping off Native populations into 'reservations'.]

[David Guyatt]

A proposal for ethnic cleansing and mass deportation.

Imagine the howls of outrage and condemnation if the USA proposed that Jews be deported to South America as part of offiical peace negotiation proposals.

Palestinians condemn US plan to settle refugees in South America

A Palestinian diaspora? A new Assyrian Israel?

These people never miss a trick in the area of historical symbolism and pure symbolic actions, do they.

[Magda Hassan]

I'm sure the South Americans may have some say in this instead of being the dumping ground for the West's and Israel's problems.

In the mean time this is obviously going to do nothing for the PA and may see it end as a viable representation of the Palestinians. The main beneficiaries of this would be Israel and Hamas, Israel's creation to split the Palestinians. Is this mission accomplished for the Israeli's?

[Magda Hassan]

Britain's MI6 trained Abbas in suppression of Palestinian opposition

By Jean Shaoul
29 January 2011

Secret documents show that Britain's intelligence service, MI6, and civil servants played a key role in crushing all opposition by militant groups, including Hamas and other Islamist factions, to Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine by developing a "security" blueprint for President Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority (PA).
The papers are just a few of the 1,600 confidential documents that Jazeera and the Guardian have published, relating to the secret US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the PA over the last 10 years. They shed light on Britain's role in shoring up the PA in the interests of Tel Aviv and Washington.
The revelations underscore the degree to which the peace talks were a cover for reorganizing the region in the interests of Israel and the US, aided and abetted by Britain, the European Union and Egypt, at the expense of the Palestinians. The deal, insofar as one was even on the table, was so wretched that it could only be imposed through the most brutal, and necessarily criminal meansunder the rubric of "security".
Britain, with its long and violent history as a colonial power, has the most impeccable credentials for such a venture.
The first document from late 2003 contains a detailed draft of a security plan. Its origins are significant. It was faxed from the Egyptian embassy, indicating MI6's close working relationship with Egypt's , the secret police so notorious for their brutality that Washington rendered prisoners to Egypt to be interrogated and broken before being sent to Guantánamo Bay.

This was worked up into a seven-page document, dated 2004, entitled "Palestinian Security Plan" and marked "confidential". Its purpose was to "encourage and enable the Palestinian Authority to fully meet its security obligations under Phase 1 of the Roadmap".
The Road Map was the Bush administration's 2003 initiative, under which Israel agreed to stop settlement building and the Palestinians agreed to clamp down on militant activity prior to negotiating a Palestinian entity. The plan set out detailed proposals for setting up a new security taskforce using Britain's "trusted PA contacts" that would be outside the control of "traditional security chiefs", a British/US security "verification team", and "direct lines" to Israeli intelligence. It dealt with issues such as suicide bombing, weapons smuggling, Qassam rockets and "terror finance".
Under the heading, "Degrading the capabilities of rejectionists", meaning Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the al-Aqsa Brigades, Fatah's armed faction, the document recommended disrupting their leaders' communications and command and control capabilities, detaining key middle-ranking officers, and confiscating "their arsenals and financial resources held within the Occupied Territories".
The document goes on to call for the detention of oppositionists without charge or trial, overturning corpus and the rule of law. It said, "We could also explore the temporary internment of leading Hamas and PIJ figures, making sure they are well-treated, with EU funding."
The PA's security forces had, by then, been cited by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other groups for widespread allegations and evidence of torture.
These proposals were subsequently worked up into a series of official papers drafted by the British Consulate's military liaison office in Jerusalem. This liaises with Britain's elite Special Air Service (SAS), specialising in counterterrorism and aerial reconnaissance, and Special Boat Service, specializing in both maritime and dry land counterterrorism and reconnaissance operations. From there, they were passed on by an MI6 officer to Jibril Rajoub, then security chief in the West Bank, and implemented by the PA security forces under the supervision most recently of US Lieutenant General Keith Dayton and British forces.
British support for the fraudulent peace process also included extensive funding of the most controversial parts of the PA security apparatus, including general intelligence, special forces and preventive security, under the heading of "UK-Palestinian projects".
Alistair Crooke is a former MI6 officer who also worked for the European Union in Israel and the Palestinian territories and now heads up Conflicts Forum, a think tank that supports a dialogue with Islamic forces in the Middle East. He commented that the plans reflect the flawed decision in 2003 by then Prime Minister Tony Blair to tie UK and EU security policy in the West Bank and Gaza to a US-led "counterinsurgency surge" against Hamas.
Both the talks and Britain's support for the suppression of those who refused to come to the table on Israel's terms are also a conspiracy against the British people. The revelations confirm that Britain's embassies and consulates are used as bases for clandestine operations and dirty dealings. That the British government has lied and previously denied directly funding the PA's preventive security is because it cannot admit the truth, which is at odds with the wishes of the British populationwho are overwhelmingly sympathetic to the Palestiniansand its own oft-repeated claims that it condemns the abuse of human rights.
The British Consulate spokesperson in East Jerusalem refused to answer questions, saying that it would not depart from its policy of never commenting on the operations of British intelligence services.
Despite the fact that these activities were funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department of International Development (DFID), by British taxpayers, Whitehall arrogantly dismisses the need to explain how the money has been used.
The compliant private media and the state-owned BBC cynically accept both the revelations and the government's "no comment" without any further analysis or discussion. The refusal of the Conservative Liberal Democrat coalition to repudiate the actions of their Labour predecessor demonstrates that they would have done and will do exactly the same.
While the FCO is widely seen as the arm of British imperialism, DFID has tried to cultivate an image of benevolent philanthropy towards "developing countries" with its aid budget. That aid, as it turns out, pays for the "security forces" of corrupt local elites that will jump to their paymasters' tune, and is packaged under the tag-lines of "capacity building" and "good governance" that litter the "economic development" plans of the international financial institutions and major powers. This explains why British Prime Minister David Cameron made great play of the fact that the international aid budget would be "protected" from the full force of his austerity measures.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jan201...-j29.shtml