The Palestine Papers E-Book

Clayton Swisher

• Herausgeber: Hesperus Press Ltd.
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 510

Beschreibung

In January, 2011, Al-Jazeera television published 1,600 pages of confidential papers and memoranda from the last five years of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.  Over the last ten years, Israel has said to its people and the world, 'There is no partner for peace.'  And the Palestinian Authority has said to its people, 'We will not give up Palestinian territory or rights.'  The Palestinian Papers, when read in their entirety, show both of these statements to be false.This book, published within three months of the leaked papers, presents complete texts of a number of the most important papers, along with a commentary on why they are so important to the unfolding events in the Middle East.The issues discussed in confidence in the papers cover the Israeli illegal settlements, the Hamas rockets, the Israeli Wall, the invasion of Gaza, the rights of Palestinian refugees, and the move to define Israel as an exclusively Jewish state – all of them hot topics which will continue to be relevant in future peace talks, if they ever resume.

Leseprobe

First published by Hesperus Press Limited 2011

Foreword and Analysis © copyright Clayton E. Swisher 2011

Introduction © copyright Ghada Karmi 2011

Publisher’s note © copyright Karl Sabbagh

Designed and typeset by Bookcraft Ltd, Stroud

Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham

ISBN 978 1 84391 353 5

Contents

Publisher’s Note

Introduction by Dr Ghada Karmi

Foreword by Clayton E. Swisher

Analysis of the Palestine Papers by Clayton E. Swisher

The Palestine Papers

Initials used in the Papers

Acknowledgements

Publisher’s Note

Peace talks usually take place to end wars, but the last real war between Israel and the Arabs took place thirty-five years ago, and in any case the peace talks described in the Palestine Papers are not between Israel and the Arabs, but between Israel and the Palestinians, a people who lived for hundreds of years in the land that Jews now claim as their own, and were expelled as part of the process by which Israel sought to establish a purely Jewish state.

It has been said that ‘diplomacy is war by other means’, but that could be said equally of these ‘negotiations’, which are revealed as nothing less than an attempt by Israel, with America as its enforcer, to achieve many of its past war aims - expansion of territory, preventing the return of Palestinians to their land, continued control over the West Bank and Gaza - by refusing to acknowledge any of the rights claimed by the people it has dispossessed and occupied.

It is easy to look at the negotiations from the outside and say ‘Surely, both sides must compromise?’ What many people don’t realise is that in all recent negotiations with Israel, the Palestinians have arrived at the table having made the largest compromise any displaced people has ever made - by revoking claims to 78% of the land that used to be Palestine, and seeking to cling on to the 22% that remains. But among the many things the Palestine Papers reveal is the extent to which Israel has taken for granted the major ‘gift’ of 78% of Palestinian land, and now insists on ‘compromise’ over what remains.

Clayton Swisher’s Foreword and Analysis takes us through some of the key revelations in the papers, picking choice quotes from the participants who were expressing views that they never thought would be publicly revealed. But while individual quotes can throw a shaft of light on a moment during the discussions, it is the hour after hour of grinding detail that repays the reader’s attention too. Someone who imagines that negotiations like these consist of an organised step by step analysis of a situation, the cut and thrust of well-resourced argument, the acceptance by one side of evidence offered by the other, the refutation of ‘facts’ with contradictory data, is going to be surprised. Instead, we get bickering and outright denial of attested facts, and in the case of Israel to the Palestinians, a kind of ‘arms folded’ smugness that says ‘say what you like, we are only interested in what is good for the Jews.’ The US role as the so-called ‘honest broker’ is revealed as a sham time after time in the papers, as American officials object to Palestinian claims on the basis that ‘Israel wouldn’t accept it.’ We don’t have similarly leaked Israel papers, but I would be very surprised if at any point in private discussions with Israel negotiators, the Americans said “You can’t say that - the Palestinians would never accept.”

Another thing that is surprising in these papers is the systematic way in which the Israelis deny basic facts which are easy to prove. One example is the constant refusal, supported up to the hilt by the US, to accept responsibility for the Palestinian refugee problem. Such a refusal might have been understandable 20 or 30 years ago, but today, when a succession of Israeli historians have probed Israel’s military archives, there is no longer any doubt that what the Palestinians have been saying for decades is true - the refugees left as a result of a planned and systematic campaign to rid the country of as many Arabs as possible before the state of Israel declared its independence.

The Papers published here are a selection of the most recent material, presented in full. The earlier papers, which can all be read on the Al Jazeera website1, involved people who are no longer playing a part in Israel-Palestinian relations and are therefore of more historic interest. But the later meetings were against a background of issues and events which are still continuing - settlement building, house demolitions, the strangling of Gaza - involving people who are still in power or who have only recently left it.

They are presented as they were written, with misprints, misspellings, and occasional hiatuses, and there is a brief glossary on page 74, covering some of the frequently used terms and acronyms.

After reading these accounts no one should be in any doubt that the only valid ‘peace negotiations’ - if there are to be any more - should be between representatives of all Palestinians, not just one faction, and an Israel which is forced to go it alone rather than rely on the automatic financial and political support of an America in thrall to its lobbies.

Karl Sabbagh, Managing Director, Hesperus Press, March 2011

Introduction

Dr Ghada Karmi

Reading through the Palestine Papers’ records of the negotiating process between Israel and the Palestinians, it would be tempting to walk away with the impression that their principal value lies in what they reveal about a pathetic, inept and weak Palestinian team, unable to handle the negotiations and hopelessly outclassed by their Israeli counterparts. It was always going to be easy to pick on the Palestinian side as the main culprit for the failure to reach an accommodation with Israel as shown by the leaked papers, despite having betrayed the core principles on which the Palestine case rests, and the subservience it showed towards Israel and the US. Indeed it is the same failure that started with the Oslo Accords of 1993. The more the Palestinians conceded to Israel, the less they got in return, but it only led to further concessions until they had hit rock bottom, as now. In complex situations such as this, where knowledge of the underlying political and historical context is essential for understanding them, attacking the weaker party instead is the lazier and more usual reaction.

There is no doubt that the display of Palestinian subservience that emerges so clearly from the Papers is deeply embarrassing. As the peace talks went on over the period covered by the revelations, from 1999 to 2010, without result the picture on the Palestinian side is one of hopeless gamblers, trying frantically to win, if even a little, until they eventually stake everything they have but still gain nothing. In this agonised bargaining, they succumbed to making what they believed would be offers irresistible to the Israelis. The most spectacular of these were over the most important issues for Palestinians: Jerusalem and the right of refugee return.

The Israeli colonisation and the increasingly fundamentalist Jewish threats to take over or damage the Muslim holy places on the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) had made Jerusalem a rallying point for Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims worldwide. Palestinians also hoped to make Jerusalem their capital in a two-state solution, and the cessation of settlement building in Jerusalem had become a major Palestinian demand. On 20 October 2010, the PA issued an unequivocal statement to Wafa, the Palestinian news agency that all types of Israeli settlement on Palestinian land were illegal. Yet, in May 2008 Palestinian negotiators were secretly offering Israel all except one of the Jewish settlements built in East Jerusalem1. They excepted Har Homa (Arabic, Jabal Abu Ghneim) a large settlement on the road to Bethlehem, but they entertained ceding Sheikh Jarrah to Israeli settlers, and made the huge ring of settlements surrounding Jerusalem legitimate (though not legal under international law).

In making this generous offer to Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister Saeb Erekat joked archly, “It is no secret that we are offering you the biggest Yerushalayim in history (Jerusalem’s Hebrew name)”. By 2009 the Palestinians had proposed a committee to take over arrangements for the Haram al-Sharif., but they offered Israel parts of the Armenian Quarter which Arafat had refused to cede. Erekat spoke of the “creativity” of people like him to find a solution for the holy places. Ingratiatingly, Ahmed Qurei’, a senior Palestinian negotiator, told Livni, who was preparing for the Kadima party elections in June 2008, “I would vote for you!” This cringing compliment did nothing, however, to soften her heart. Despite all their concessions, when the Palestinians refused to cede Har Homa or Maale Adumim, the huge settlement which links East Jerusalem almost to the Jordan Valley, or Ariel, the settlement by Nablus in the heart of the West Bank, Livni rejected all Palestinian offers. In July 2008, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state to George Bush, reiterated the same message. She told them that if they insisted on Israel not keeping Maale Adumim and Ariel, then “you won’t have a state”.

The most striking concession, however, concerned the right of return, an issue all Palestinians considered fundamental to their case. Enshrined in international law and historical precedent, it had acquired an almost sacred quality for Palestinians. UNGA resolution 194, which required Israel to repatriate the Palestinian refugees, was passed in 1948, and has been affirmed at the UN countless times since then. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that anyone can leave his home for whatever reason and return to it. International precedents of refugees returned to their original place, for example, Kosovo in 1999, exist to shore up this Palestinian right. For generations, the Palestinian refugees, estimated by UNRWA in 2006, at 6.3 million, dispersed in the camps of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and the occupied territories, have been reared on the expectation of returning to the homeland.

Israel’s power and its determined rejection of a refugee return had convinced many Palestinian leaders that they would have to compromise on this basic right. But the right of return remained the official Palestinian position. After the 1993 Oslo Accords which deferred discussion of the right of return to the final stages, this right started to be toyed with as a possible bargaining chip. In fact, the acceptance of a two-state solution was in itself an argument against the right of return. If the Palestinian side accepted Israel as a Jewish state, then how could that be reconciled with an influx of non-Jews (the refugees) which would destroy that state’s Jewishness? The matter was left ambiguous, and the public assurances on the right of return remained the same. The 2002 Saudi-sponsored Arab peace plan spoke of a just settlement for the refugee issue according to international law, without detailing what that meant. Since the late 1990s, various European and American plans for settlement of the refugees outside Israel had been proposed, but the refugees themselves were never consulted or informed. They still looked for deliverance and a return to the homeland.

Undeterred, the Palestinian negotiators were recorded in the Palestine Papers as giving in on the right of return. In talks with Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert between 2007 and 2008, and with George Mitchell, the US Middle East envoy, in 2009 the Palestinians agreed that just 10,000 refugees and their families could return as part of an overall peace settlement. Saeb Erekat ruled out holding a referendum on the agreement amongst the refugees. In February 2009, he told Mitchell that, “on refugees, the deal is there”. In the next month, Abbas was recorded as arguing that Israel could not be asked to accept a return of even one million refugees, since it would mean the end of Israel. This, despite the fact that he himself was a 1948 refugee from Safad. In December 2010, Tzipi Livni said she was against any refugee return and had said so to the Palestinians.

The surrender on the right of return was part of the Palestinian negotiators’ acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state. Between 2007 and 2008, the Papers show that the Israeli negotiators continually stressed Israel’s Jewish character, even suggesting that Arab citizens of Israel could be moved into a Palestinian state. This went unchallenged by the Palestinian side. In fact in November 2007, Erekat was recorded as telling Tzipi Livni that if Israel wanted to define itself as a Jewish state it could do so. He said later, in June 2009, that Israel’s Jewishness was a “non-issue.” In this atmosphere, it is no wonder that Condoleeza Rice proposed in June 2008 that Palestinian refugees could be moved to Chile and Argentina.2 It was left to Palestinian community leaders in Chile and Argentina to point out that such immigration would be a violation of the refugees’ internationally recognised rights to return.

The Palestine Papers revealed many more betrayals of Palestinian rights and entitlements. But simple condemnation of this abject surrender by the Palestinian negotiators, deplorable as it is, will not throw light on how and why it happened. Behind the unseemly behaviour of Abbas and his negotiators lies a larger issue. What was the political and historical context in which the surrender of basic Palestinian rights was exacted, and who was ultimately responsible for the sorry picture that emerged? It is in answers to these questions that the full significance of what the Palestine Papers tell us can be seen.

The core of the problem is encapsulated in the exchanges between various members of the US administration and the PA that took place at different times from 2007 to 2009. From these it becomes clear that after 2006 when the Hamas government was elected in the occupied territories and subsequently boycotted by the west, the Fateh dominated PA was the only leadership that Washington would allow. In November 2008, David Welsh, the US assistant secretary of state, told the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, that the Obama administration wanted to see “the same Palestinian faces” in office if it was to continue funding the PA. When in November 2009, Mahmoud Abbas announced he would not run for re-election, Hilary Clinton, the US secretary of state, declared that “was not an option” for him, and no elections too place. Before that, in March 2007, when a national unity government between Fateh and Hamas with Ismail Haniyeh3 as prime minister had been agreed, the US pressured Abbas into disrupting it through a clumsy Fateh coup executed against Hamas in Gaza three months later. In the same year, the US security coordinator in charge of training PA militias on the West Bank, General Keith Dayton, warned against Fateh elements trying to undermine Salam Fayyad. The Palestinian prime minister is regarded as the lynchpin of US schemes for a settlement and so, indispensable.

These American interventions, which also reflected Israeli priorities, had no regard for the questions of legitimacy and representation so crucial to the validity of the agreements that were being discussed in the name of the Palestinian people. The issue of representation had angered many Palestinians. As Al-Quds’s editorial of 25 January pointed out, and in numerous interviews on the Aljazeera channel subsequently, no one had deputed this group of individuals (the PA officials) to negotiate on behalf of the 10 million Palestinians throughout the world. But as we have seen, the issue of representation was continually side-stepped by the negotiators themselves, by Israel and the US sponsor of the peace negotiations, and by the rest of the Quartet comprising the UN, Russia, and the European Union.

Had America’s public stance - that the Palestinians were free to choose their own leaders - been matched by its private one, the whole PA would have been declared null and void.

The Palestinian president’s term of office expired in January 2009, and without new elections Mahmoud Abbas’s presidency was invalid after that date. The same applied to his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, except that his appointment had never been valid. According to the Palestine Basic Law, he would have needed the agreement of the Palestine Legislative Council (PLC) to be appointed. But this itself, last elected in 2006, was up for re-election and had no legal mandate. Neither did the PLO executive committee which could no longer act in the name of the Palestinian people, a point of relevance for any future resumption of peace talks. Most of the period which the Palestine Papers covers, however, relates to an earlier time, from 1999 to 2010, but that in itself does not resolve the problem.

For, even if there had been valid representation from the electoral point of view, the PA’s remit concerned only the 3.5 million people on the West Bank, that is, one third of the Palestinian population worldwide, estimated at 10-11 million. The split between Fateh in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, which had started in 2007, meant that Gaza was excluded from PA rule, and the division was nowhere near being resolved. This problem could be mitigated by the fact that Abbas and the negotiators participated in the peace talks on the basis of their affiliation to the PLO, of which the Palestinian president was chairman and which had been originally set up to represent the whole Palestinian people. This was encouraged by Israel and the US, but it provided a spurious legitimacy.

Ever since the Oslo Accords and the return of the PLO leadership to the Palestinian territories in 1994, the PLO had become effectively defunct, its committees and branches inactive. The Palestine National Council (PNC), the Palestinian government-in-exile and PLO supreme body, had not met since 1998 in Gaza. Its members were admitted by Israel at the time on condition they voted to revoke parts of the Palestine National Charter considered hostile to Israel. The PNC was reconvened in 2009 in Ramallah in order to replace six deceased members of the PLO executive committee without whom the committee was illegitimate. However, the PNC meeting itself was illegitimate since it lacked a quorum, and its regular meetings as required to preserve its legitimacy had not taken place for years. Though supposed to include all Palestinian factions and sectors, the PNC had neither Hamas nor Islamic Jihad members. There was no escaping the fact that PLO titles and positions in such circumstances were meaningless.

But even if the negotiators had been legitimate, they still had no popular mandate, either through consultation or by referendum, to negotiate away issues of such critical importance to all Palestinians. No refugees, whose future featured prominently in the negotiations as revealed by the Papers, were asked for their views, and no Jerusalem Palestinians were consulted about the Jewish settlements to remain in their neighbourhoods. In these circumstance, had Israel responded positively and a deal been drawn up on the lines presented in the Palestine Papers, did anyone amongst the negotiators or the American and western sponsors of the peace process really imagine that such a deal would have held for long? The Camp David talks in 2000 between the then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, and Yasser Arafat broke down precisely because Arafat knew he could not sell the poor deal over Jerusalem and the right of return of refugees he was offered to the Palestinian people. With all his popularity and status, Arafat could not go beyond certain limits. So how would a man like Abbas, with little public support, and a coterie of widely criticised, even reviled negotiators stand a chance of selling an even worse deal to the Palestinian people?

The answer must be that no one, aside from the Palestinians, cared. Had it been otherwise, the “peace process” as it has been to date would have been abandoned long ago as a failure. The faces and assumptions, far from remaining frozen sine die as the US wished, would have been changed. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the end of the peace process is not a settlement, but precisely what we have been witnessing: a long-term prevarication by Israel and its western backers, punctuated by periodic bouts of criticism of Israeli policy and exhortations to both parties to make compromises. The spat over the Jewish settlement building freeze required by the PA and the US in September 2010 and largely ignored by Israel is a case in point.

Had Israel been remotely interested in a peace deal with the Palestinians, it had ample opportunity in these last negotiations, and certainly long before. Even with such far reaching Palestinian concessions, Tzipi Livni could still tell Ahmed Qurei in November 2007 that, with regard to settlement building, “Israeli policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we’ll say that it is impossible, we already have the land and we cannot create the [Palestinian] state,” adding in case of doubt that it had been her government’s policy “for a really long time”4. These views are supported by various Israeli sources. Commenting on Israel’s insistence that the Palestinians recognise the Jewishness of the state ahead of any deal, the Israeli daily, Yediot Ahoronot, (“This is the whole story”, 16 September 2010) noted that the only reason for this demand, not imposed on any state in the world, was to create further delays to a peaceful settlement. Another article in Haaretz (“Israel is not interested in peace”, 16 December 2010), reviewed Israel’s rejection of all Arab peace offers to date and also concluded that Israel, neither government nor people, was genuinely interested in peace.

Nor, it would seem is the US. A meeting between Saeb Erekat and General James Jones, National Security Advisor to the U.S. President, on 21 October 20095 set out the US position eloquently. Responding to a despairing plea from Erekat that Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, was making no contact with the Palestinians, despite all their climb downs, Jones fobs him off with a series of soothing platitudes to the effect that President Obama was committed to a two-state solution, but that the “real problem is finding a path to get there”. Dennis Ross, the former US Middle East peace envoy and ardent Zionist, present at the same meeting, follows that with assurances of honesty and “speaking from the heart”. What is clear is that there was no substance to the US utterances and no action to pressure Israel in any way. When the UN Security Council voted on 19 February 2011 to condemn Israel’s’ settlement as illegal, the US was the only member state to vote against.

The European Union, despite its massive funding of the PA and official postures, was basically no different. The story of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process since 1993 has been one of persistent dishonesty on the part of the US and its European allies. They let the Palestinians believe that statehood was just around the corner, with “state building” enterprises and preparations for independence, while in reality doing nothing to curb Israel’s hold on Jerusalem or the West Bank, supposed to form the territory of the putative Palestinian state. In consequence, the Palestinian leaders, impotent and unwise, put their faith in the west, and especially the US. As Israel rebuffed every peace overture, the Palestinian leadership was led into lowering its demands even more, with the starting point for new talks set at the last low level. By 2007, the Palestine Papers show that it was no big step to yet more concessions for Palestinian negotiators with this history behind them.

The blame for this state of affairs falls on the inept and unprincipled Palestinian leadership of course, but far more so on the context in which they had been forced to operate: where the major world powers chose to line up with the stronger party against the weaker one. The Palestinian capitulation and desperation that followed were inevitable in such a situation. However, the massive wind of change sweeping through the Arab world in 2011 is unlikely to leave the Israeli-Palestinian situation untouched. The issue for the rebellious Arabs was one of dignity and self-respect. The Palestine Papers’ exposure of Palestinian humiliation, indignity and lack of respect, may yet lead to unexpected consequences.

Foreword

Clayton E. Swisher

From January 23-26, 2011, Al Jazeera Network began releasing the Palestine Papers, the largest disclosure of confidential negotiation documents in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The network’s Arabic and English channels aired the most essential extracts, while articles exploring the failure of the Middle East peace process appeared on both its websites. The raw documents were published on Al Jazeera’s Transparency Unit website (www.transparency.aljazeera.net). Those documents—more than 1,600 files spanning the period from 1999 to 2010—included minutes of high-level meetings between US, European, Israeli, and Palestinian Authority officials. The centre-left Israeli newspaper Haaretz declared the Papers “much more important than the documents released by WikiLeaks.” Indeed, the meeting minutes in the Papers reflect the unvarnished candour one would find in top-secret wiretaps rather than formal diplomatic dispatches.

The publication of the Palestine Papers, in which Al Jazeera was joined by the UK-based Guardian newspaper, dominated the global news agenda for four days. Headlines from the Papers appeared in nearly every major US, European, and Middle Eastern newspaper, followed by international news outlets CNN, BBC, and Al-Arabiyya. Commentary in the blogosphere exploded on the topic, as social media sites Twitter and Facebook brought secret discussions into the daylight. Private conversations from the Papers were also beamed across digital platforms and on cell phone displays around the world.

By fate, epic events were taking place in the Middle East as the Papers were published. In Sudan, a referendum from January 9-15 paved the way for South Sudan’s independence, and weeks of protests in Tunisia led on January 14th to the ousting and exile of Tunisian President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. As the joint Al Jazeera-Guardian coverage came to a close, the Tunisian example was spreading all over the Arab world. It rose to a fever pitch in Egypt, where thousands began to protest their own dictatorship and demand not only the removal of Hosni Mubarak but an end to the three-decade state of emergency, a new Constitution, free elections and other democratic reforms. A critical mass began to form in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, and demonstrators persevered for eighteen days, leading to Mubarak’s resignation on February 11.

As the Palestinian Authority was still reeling from embarrassment caused by the Papers, the exit of its longtime Egyptian ally only served to weaken the organization. PA President Mahmoud Abbas declared his public support for Mubarak until the very end, despite overwhelming public demands in Egypt for his removal. The US-trained PA security forces in the West Bank physically assaulted protesters as they gathered to support the Egyptian people’s demonstrations against the dictator. As evidenced by the Papers, Mubarak’s regime had become a crutch for the PA, its dominant Fateh party, and President Abbas. Indeed, the Papers reveal the collaborative effort by the United States and Egypt to support Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip, a collective punishment intended to weaken Fateh’s political rival Hamas. (A franchise of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, Hamas had won the January 2006 democratic elections in Palestine. However, the PA, along with Israel and the United States, refused to recognize the results and did everything possible to undermine Hamas’s authority. With Egyptian and US help, the PA prepared a coup against Hamas in 2007, which Hamas crushed that June. Ever since, Hamas has ruled Gaza while the PA has ruled the West Bank.)

Even as the Arab world’s revolutionary winds blew elsewhere, aftershocks of the Palestine Papers continued as many thousands downloaded their contents, allowing for both private study and public debate. Many Palestinians were stunned by the scale of concessions offered by the PA in their name. A common sentiment was expressed on January 24 by a young Palestinian named Tarik Kishawi, speaking to Al Jazeera English live from a refugee camp in Lebanon. Kishawi charged Nabil Shaath, a former PLO foreign minister, with belonging to a “puppet regime for the Israeli occupation.” Sitting on Al Jazeera’s set in Doha, Shaath smiled and replied in a patronizing manner, “I will forgive him,” fueling the perception of an out-of-touch PA leadership. The outrage extended elsewhere in the Palestinian Diaspora. Former PLO representative-turned-Oxford academic Karma Nabulsi declared in the Guardian that “this seemingly endless and ugly game of the peace process is now finally over. The peace process is a sham. Palestinians must reject their officials and rebuild their movement.” On January 27th, students and intellectuals went so far as to stage a sit-in at the PLO’s London offices, protesting their disapproval of the PA’s conduct.

The resignation on February 12 of Dr. Saeb Erekat, for years the PLO’s chief negotiator, proved to be only a marginal event. On various programs, Erekat claimed that the disclosures were part of a CIA plot to overthrow the Palestinian Authority, while PLO Executive Committee member Yasser Abed Rabbo launched personal attacks against the Emir of Qatar, who owns and finances Al Jazeera. The Papers showed the PA’s animus not only against the Emir but against other Arab leaders. The charges became so personal following Al Jazeera’s broadcast—including the burning of effigies—that Abbas took the step of issuing a presidential decree on February 13 ordering all PLO officials to cease and desist in the name of preserving good relations with other Arab countries. As the controversy boiled, Erekat, Abed Rabbo, and Abbas refused to address the substance of the Papers, preferring instead to label them as forgeries, even as other Fateh officials, including Shaath and other former PA negotiators, gave interviews confirming the Papers’ authenticity.

After Mubarak left office, the PA announced a cabinet reshuffle and expressed its desire to hold municipal, parliamentary, and presidential elections by September 2011. However, its constitutional authority to do so is open to question, as Abbas continues to serve as President without any legal mandate, his term having expired in January 2009. And calls for an election in the absence of national unity are questionable; as long as the West Bank is dominated by PA security forces and the Gaza Strip by those of Hamas, there is little chance of free and fair elections. The Papers indicate that reconciliation talks were far too often a public relations exercise, with Fateh moving behind the scenes to defeat Hamas, supported by Israel and the US.

More substantive than the hot PA rhetoric attacking the release of the Papers was its dissolution of the Negotiation Support Unit, an organization of lawyers and policy experts who authored many of the documents. The dismissal of these young legal minds is akin to the US State Department firing its own legal advisors over the embarrassing WikiLeaks disclosures rather than addressing the causes of the leaks or the misguided policies exposed by them.

Reacting poorly in the wake of political embarrassment, the public outcry in the PA-controlled West Bank grew louder. Abbas dismissed the Papers as “soap opera” theatrics, while his supporters attacked and vandalized Al Jazeera’s Ramallah bureau. Among those leading the charge, according to the New York Times, were plainclothes officers of Abbas’s Preventive Security. Threats and intimidation against Al Jazeera journalists continued, as the PA-controlled media accused Jazeera of every conspiracy imaginable. On Facebook, Fateh supporters circulated pictures of an Israeli flag emblazoned with the Al Jazeera logo. As PA officials began to recant the charges of forgery, one after another, they shifted to a familiar refrain in the age of WikiLeaks: that there was “nothing new” in the Papers. By that time, the officials’ reputation as negotiators had sustained severe damage, nearly all of it self-inflicted, as an opportunity to explain their political strategy was lost in the desire for revenge.

Unsurprisingly, condemnation of the PA was immediate in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. There was little shock expressed by Hamas officials, who argued that the PA records were inescapable proof of the depth of the Authority’s collusion with Israel. Indeed, the Papers show the extent to which the PA had come to regard Hamas and resistance-oriented Palestinians as an enemy comparable to the Israeli occupation itself.

Amid Israel’s entrenched culture of irredentist stonewalling on negotiations, the release of the Papers actually helped the political careers of those, like former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who had generally been depicted in the media as interested in peace and willing to bargain in good faith. In fact, the Papers show that Israel conceded next to nothing—a badge of honor in the country’s current domestic political environment. So impressed by the new evidence of Livni’s willingness to transfer Arab villages to the future state of Palestine, Israeli hardliner and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman went so far as to invite Livni to a coalition meeting. Other Israelis, along with many foreign observers, declared that the Papers showed there really was a Palestinian partner, a notion Israelis had been taught was untrue following the collapse of peace talks at Camp David in 2000. To the Israeli right wing, of course, the extensive PA concessions were dismissed as not going far enough.

Editorial pages around the world gave enormous coverage to the Papers, and many carried harsh attacks—especially from supporters of the “peace process”—on Al Jazeera for publishing the documents. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times condemned Al Jazeera for its “nasty job” in releasing the Papers, while former AIPAC official and US Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk scolded Al Jazeera for not congratulating the PA for being so pliable.

Similar criticism came from the so-called Quartet (the United States, Russia, the EU and the UN). Its Middle East envoy, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said Al Jazeera’s intention was to “destabilize.” Blair conveniently evaded the bigger question of whether his own efforts, revealed in the Papers, had perhaps been destabilizing. Take, for instance a plan tabled by MI6, the British foreign intelligence service, during his tenure as Prime Minister in 2004 that proposed the “temporary internment of leading Hamas and PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) figures, making sure they are well-treated, with EU funding.” In the era of extraordinary renditions, it was just one of several plots hatched in US and European capitals to weaken Hamas and strengthen Fateh, the West’s preferred negotiating partner.

As journalists at one of the world’s most influential news channels, Al Jazeera staff are used to being praised by people and condemned by governments. As an American reporter who has spent the past four years working there, I have learned to live with this background noise. If anything, I consider it a testament to our professionalism and editorial boldness rather than a source of embarrassment.

I should note here that my involvement as a writer and journalist covering the Israel-Palestine conflict precedes the release of the Palestine Papers; my book on the Oslo process, The Truth About Camp David, was published in 2004. Based on eyewitness testimony from top negotiators on the US, Israeli and Palestinian sides at those talks, that book demonstrated, among other things, that the joint US-Israeli strategy of blaming the Palestinians for the failure of those 2000 talks was based on lies.

The Truth About Camp David elicited considerable interest, especially among the Israeli left and among US-based foreign policy realists. That led to many invitations to travel, speak and work at think tanks, and ultimately landed me a job in television. My journey has been rich in irony. Indeed, the same PA officials who attacked me for my involvement in Al Jazeera’s release of the Palestine Papers had frequently praised me for my book in earlier years, commending me for exposing the truth behind the distorted charges that had once turned the world against them. What those officials failed to realize was that then, as now, a journalist’s obligation is to get the story right, a mission I have tried to pursue since my earliest days as a writer and reporter.

I spent hundreds of hours conducting interviews and reviewing official records and transcripts to complete The Truth About Camp David. Yet nothing could have prepared me for the shock I experienced, nearly seven years later, when I began reviewing the Palestine Papers. I knew the material was much too important to be buried in a book, and that its scope would require the analysis and presentation of far more than a single individual. As I had learned through hard experience, nothing short of total publication of the documents would satisfy the many interested stakeholders and critics who would understandably demand to see the evidence. To that end, others at Al Jazeera also quickly realized that monopolizing the Papers would have harmed rather than helped public understanding of the subject.

Fortunately, Al Jazeera had the resources to ensure its full presentation would be possible. For several months I was part of a team of journalists at the network who experienced many fascinating but agonizing discoveries. Authenticating the documents was our first priority. Working in the WikiLeaks era of massive document disclosures, our mission was to give the Papers context, nuance, and fair treatment, so that our audiences could become more informed. It was an altogether different challenge turning papers into television, setting up a website to display the Papers, and translating relevant documents, as some of the files were written in Arabic even though negotiations are conducted almost exclusively in English.

Fearing the possibility of viewer fatigue and diminishing returns, we decided, together with our Guardian partners, to focus our coverage around four distinct themes: Jerusalem/Borders, 1948 Arab Villages and Refugees, Security Collaboration, and the Gaza/Goldstone cover-up. There is much, much more in the Papers, since they span the period from 1999 to 2010, but the recent era, particularly the Annapolis process from 2007 to 2009 and the years of the Obama administration, have far greater relevance in today’s political environment.

At the time of the Annapolis Conference, in November 2007, I wrote an analysis on the Al Jazeera English website in which I naively predicted that conference would become a “footnote in history.” I realize now that I could not have been more incorrect. The more than 280 private meetings under the Annapolis umbrella, intended to resolve the core issues under the caveat “nothing agreed until everything is agreed,” extended far beyond any previous discussions, including those at Camp David in 2000. In particular, the PA’s presentation of maps on May 4, 2008 suggested it was willing to concede valuable Palestinian land—areas beyond anything the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat had contemplated. There were proposals that many, if not most, Palestinians would oppose, made without the consent of landowners and families who risked becoming victims of land theft for a second time, this time with the acquiescence of their own leaders.

In my estimation, the central message of the Papers is not the story of the United States proving yet again that it is not an honest broker, although that current runs through nearly every meeting. No, the main story is the futile and pathetic attempts by the Palestinian Authority to do almost anything to show that it is an acceptable negotiating partner after Camp David and against the tide of 9/11 stereotypes and biases of the West and Israel. The documents show that PA officials failed to understand that neither Israel nor the West much cares about Palestinian statehood, and that no concessions short of a total Palestinian surrender would satisfy them.

In the fall of 2010, I traveled the world meeting with US, Israeli, and Palestinian Authority officials who had no idea that I held in my possession the secret records of their negotiations. Some gave general interviews on background; others, including Saeb Erekat, agreed to reflect on the talks while on camera. Those discussions, along with the meticulous guidance provided by sources, allowed me to understand the Papers more clearly. I hope that in reading this book, people of goodwill will undergo a similar process, and that it will increase the understanding of those who want to end an injustice that continues to stoke tensions throughout the world.

What follows is a summary of my own findings after studying the Papers over several months. It is a first, rough draft of history, bound to include mistakes, which I alone am responsible for. They are intended to orient the reader for the core of the book: the presentation in the later section of the book of selected documents and meeting minutes. It should be emphasized that this presentation is by no means comprehensive; indeed, it only begins to scratch the surface of the many stories contained in the Papers. My purpose is to encourage others—from universities to refugee camps to government offices and think tanks—to investigate and debate this historic set of documents.

Given what is happening in 2011 in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya—indeed, what is happening all over the Arab world—it is my hope that the public will not see these pages as simply an indictment of some governments, although it is certainly true that governments have failed and are worthy of criticism. It is far more important, in the wake of the Middle East revolutions, that the Papers be viewed as testament to the inevitability of failure when governments are not answerable to their people, and when people do not take control of their own destiny, without foreign meddling.

That, I believe, is the surest path to justice, if there ever is to be any in Palestine.

Analysis of the Palestine Papers

Clayton E. Swisher

1. East Jerusalem’s Holy Sites

Focusing on that part of the Palestine Papers covering the Annapolis period, 2007-2009, it is clear the Palestinian Authority were prepared to make unprecedented concessions to the Israeli government, agreeing to relinquish parts of Occupied East Jerusalem and other West Bank lands. In return, the Israeli government pocketed those concessions while acknowledging that it had a project to confiscate more land and erect Jewish-only colonies. This was clearly admitted on May 29, 2008, by Udi Dekel, the head of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s negotiating team.

Dekel: Since 2000, something happened in those 8 years so we are not at the same starting point. You started a terror war on us and we created facts on the ground.1 This is the reality that we live in today, so we can’t go back to Camp David. Circumstances changed considerably since then.2

The Papers reveal that the most controversial of the PA’s suggested concessions dealt with East Jerusalem and its holy sites. It had been several years since either had been discussed in any formal setting.

The Camp David 2000 talks marked the first time leaders from both sides bargained directly over the status of Occupied East Jerusalem and in particular its holy sites. International law and the 1967 lines clearly show that the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount is within the Occupied Palestinian Territories. But in 2000, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian president Yasser Arafat were nonetheless willing to negotiate over them, and their willingness was no small controversy. Many participants in the talks attest that the failure to resolve the status of the Old City’s holy sites was the chief reason the overall talks failed (rather than, as was frequently alleged by outsiders, the question of Palestinian refugees).

In spite of President Bill Clinton’s various proposals for dividing sovereignty, Arafat proudly defended the PLO’s unwillingness to compromise on the sovereignty of the Haram, which is home to Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site. It was a principled position that earned him scorn among Israelis and Americans—but universal support at home, and throughout the broader Islamic world.

Nearly a decade later, the Papers make clear that PLO Executive Committee member Saeb Erekat was willing to show flexibility on the Haram’s final status.

It is unclear whether he made the statements below to gain the admiration of his American counterparts (as privately confided to me by his peers) or merely to break the deadlock created by the hardline Netanyahu government. But this much is certain: any tinkering with the legal status of the Haram al-Sharif is dangerous and unprecedented.

Seemingly aware of the risks, Erekat nonetheless offered this exchange on Wednesday, October 21, 2009, during his meetings at the US State Department in Washington, DC.

Saeb Erekat to Deputy U.S. Envoy David Hale and US State Department Legal Advisor Jonathon Schwartz

Erekat: Even the Old City can be worked out [discusses breakdown of sovereignty over Old City] except for the Haram and what they call Temple Mount. There you need the creativity of people like me ... [George Mitchell rejoins the meeting] Erekat: I want to point out I am answering in my personal capacity on these questions... ... Schwartz: Discuss Jerusalem with the borders or separate? Erekat: It’s solved. You have the Clinton Parameters formula. For the Old City sovereignty for Palestine, except the Jewish quarter and part of the Armenian quarter ... the Haram can be left to be discussed - there are creative ways, having a body or a committee, having undertakings for example not to dig. The only thing I cannot do is convert to Zionism. Schwartz: To confirm to Senator Mitchell, your private idea ... Erekat:This conversation is in my private capacity. Schwartz: We’ve heard the idea from others. So you’re not the first to raise it. Erekat:Others are not the chief negotiator of the PLO. Schwartz: I meant this gives you cover - that it’s not you who raised it. So you would separate Jerusalem from the border? Erekat: No. But we use Clinton Parameters - except for the Haram [separate from border].Hale: So you’re not talking about the border only. You’re talking about Jerusalem, security ... Erekat: Yes. Once we define these, we can move to bilaterals. Hale: So this is a way of moving from proximity talks to bilaterals. Erekat: I repeat my message: no bilateral negotiations without a settlement freeze. Hale: You succeeded in making the point.3

Months later, on January 15, 2010, in the presence of Senator Mitchell’s staff, Erekat again reaffirmed unprecedented Palestinian offers—including on Jerusalem—made during the Annapolis process:

Erekat: Israelis want the two state solution but they don’t trust. They want it more than you think, sometimes more than Palestinians. What is in that paper gives them the biggest Yerushalaim in Jewish history, symbolic number of refugees return, demilitarized state ... What more can I give?4

These statements are critical, because the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount had seldom been raised in more than 280 bilateral meetings during the Annapolis process.

The reason for this was domestic Israeli politics: Prime minister Olmert’s coalition partners demanded that the status of Jerusalem’s holy sites not be negotiated, with the religious right-wing Shas party threatening to leave the government if the issue was even discussed. Thus the Israeli delegation was not allowed to speak about it, as reiterated to the PA by Dekel on July 2, 2008:

Dekel: Why does your side keep mentioning Jerusalem in every meeting - isn’t there an understanding on this between the leaders?5

The Israelis, in other words, freely admitted that they could not entertain any bargain on Jerusalem. Yet in various meetings the Palestinian Authority went ahead and presented its ideas—regardless of the tactical consequences, and despite years of experience in which Israel pocketed PA concessions to use as a new starting point in later talks. Here is what the PA’s overtures sounded like in the Annapolis meeting of June 30, 2008:

Qurei: Jerusalem is part of the territory occupied in 67. We can discuss and agree on many issues relating to Jerusalem: religious places, infrastructures, municipal function, economic issues, security, settlements. However, the municipal borders for us are 67. This is the basis, and this is where we can start. [Silence] Livni: Houston, we have a problem. Qurei: Silence is agreement ... Erekat:It is no secret that on our map we proposed we are offering you the biggest Yerushalayim in history. But we must talk about the concept of Al-Quds.Livni: Do you have a concept? Erekat: Yes. We have a detailed concept - but we will only discuss with a partner. And it’s doable. Livni: No, I can’t.6

By the end of the Annapolis negotiations, the PA began to accept that some internationalizing of the Haram al-Sharif might be required - regardless of the potential implications.

In an offer conveyed orally to Abbas in the late summer of 2008 and recounted in a document dated August 31, 2008, Olmert floated the idea of allowing the United States, along with Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, to form a committee that would determine the fate of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. According to the Papers, that committee would not have had the ability to force either Israel or the weaker Palestinian party to accept an agreement.

Erekat’s comments appear to confirm that the PLO—speaking on behalf of all Palestinians—would find such an arrangement acceptable. The implications are profound: the United States has no historic standing on the issue of holy sites (it is not even a self-described Christian nation) and considers itself Israel’s closest ally. Moreover, the Israelis could hardly have thought a formulation would be wise without trusted leaders in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt—particularly problematic now, given the 2011 revolution in Egypt that ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

What’s more, the Papers reveal eagerness by Jordan and in particular Saudi Arabia to shape the Haram’s final outcome, perhaps to shore up the respective monarchs’ own religious credentials among restive populations at home. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques in Mecca and Medina, is described in the Papers as wanting a resolution of Islam’s third-holiest site regardless of the costs. Erekat described it as follows to US Assistant Secretary Welch on December 2, 2008—just weeks before the Gaza war:

Erekat: Saudi’s main concern is Jerusalem - not swaps and neighbourhoods. To them Jerusalem is the Haram.

Welch: So they want to know who will “own” it? Erekat: The status. I told them: I cannot tell you. What defines this “holy basin,” what it includes ... I don’t know. [Reference to the difficulties on getting Jerusalem addressed, Shas, and the Annapolis statement on the core issues].7

2. Borders

June 15, 2008 Trilateral US-Israeli-Palestinian Meeting (Principals: Rice, Livni, Qurei)

Qurei: We proposed that the ratio of swap should not exceed 1.9% from the total area of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, and that swapped land should be located on 1967 borders.

- As for settlements, we proposed the following: Removal of some settlements, annexation of others, and keeping others under Palestinian sovereignty.

- This last proposition could help in the swap process. We proposed that Israel annexes all settlements in Jerusalem except Jabal Abu Ghneim (Har Homa). This is the first time in history that we make such a proposition; we refused to do so in Camp David.8

The Palestine Papers provide further evidence of how the Palestinian Authority agreed to Israeli annexation of illegal East Jerusalem settlements, including Ramat Shlomo, Pisgat Ze’ev, French Hill, Neve Yakov, and Gilo, during a seminal negotiation on May 4, 2008.

Developed on stolen Palestinian land, these settlements still make headlines. In February 2010, the Netanyahu government announced 1,600 new settlement tenders in East Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo just as US Vice President Joe Biden was visiting Israel. The announcement prompted a harsh reaction from the United States and the Palestinian Authority. Reacting with a sense of disbelief, Prime Minister Netanyahu told the Jerusalem Post on March 14 that “Everyone - including the Palestinians - understood that neighborhoods like Gilo and Ramat Shlomo would remain part of Israel in any final agreement, and that this has been the case in all the various plans drawn up over the years.”9 Apparently not fazed by that controversy, Israel announced 625 new tenders in Pisgat Ze’ev in December 2010, just as President Obama’s Middle East envoy was in town to push for a three-month settlement freeze.

The full text of the May 4, 2008, meeting where these areas were conceded under the “nothing agreed until everything agreed” headline is included, along with relevant maps, on page 143-148 of this book.10 What follows is a summary of the exchanges between Tzipi Livni, Ahmed Qurei, Saeb Erekat and Samih al-Abed - exposing the intent, and the key details, of the maps they tabled to legitimize Israel’s acquisition of Palestinian property.

Samih: We have done our best to include the largest number of settlers. Livni: I want to say that we do not like this suggestion because it does not meet our demands, and probably it was not easy for you to think about it but I really appreciate it. I think we have a reason to continue. Abu Ala’ [Ahmed Qurei]: We understand how hard it was for you as well. Erekat: In Jerusalem it was hard for us but we decided to give you. Livni: Can we have the maps?

Erekat: I want to say something. I am from the leadership headed by Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] and the leadership does not accept the facts on the ground. Livni: That is why I said what I have said. Erekat: This is not the Koran. Gabriel did not come down from heaven and revealed it to us. We have taken your interests and concerns into account, but not all. This is the first time in Palestinian-Israeli history in which such a suggestion is officially made. What we are doing no one will do for us, not the Americans or the Europeans. Livni: I know about this.

The PA representatives continued with specifics on which areas of Occupied East Jerusalem they would relinquish in the pursuit of Palestinian statehood. While they did not allow Israel the major “Greater Jerusalem” settlement blocs - Ma’ale Adumim and Gush Etzion - they nonetheless offered to give permanence to sizable Israeli settlements with proximity to the Old City. Less than two months later, on June 30, 2008, it proved a slippery slope, as the PA were even ready to consider flashpoint Palestinian Jerusalem neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah:

Becker: We did not mean to assess, but to evaluate where we stand in the committees, to look at what is happening in each committee and see if there is something else we can start drafting or working on.

Qurei: [Regarding swaps] so for an area in Sheikh Jarrah, I have to see [an] equivalent area.

Becker: This is about making progress on issues on the table ... 11

It should also be noted that, in spite of the PA’s insistence that any swaps be equal in value, land in East Jerusalem is extremely valuable - if not invaluable - both financially and culturally which means that no land that Israel would be willing to offer from the Israeli side of the 1967 border could balance land in East Jerusalem. Moreover, the May 4, 2008, presentation not only showed the Israelis what portions of East Jerusalem the PA was willing to concede, it also tipped the PA’s hand as to which undeveloped areas might be used to help bring contiguity to Israeli settlements:

Erekat:We are building for you the largest Jerusalem in history. Khaled: This area was the most difficult to delineate. Tal: How can Pisgat Ze’ev settlement be connected with the French Hill? Samih: A bridge can be built to connect them.12

Even after conceding the Jewish Quarter of the Old City (Arafat entertained the idea of giving up the Jewish Quarter and a safe passageway through the Armenian Quarter at Camp David in 2000), the Palestinian Authority asks for just 0.37 km of land in return for 6.68 km, as shown in full at the top of page 144). It would use that small concession to build up the Palestinian village of Beit Safafa, which has far less proximity to the holy sites than other neighborhoods it was willing to relinquish.

Then there is the concession of the Israeli settlement of Gilo. In December 2010, the Palestinian Authority publicly stomped its feet in protest against Gilo’s “natural growth.” But - since it had known from May 4, 2008, that the PA would be willing to accept Gilo’s annexation - the Israeli government could claim it had justification to continue building.

Livni: Doesn’t Har Homa exist? Khaled: The interest is to reconnect Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Such reconnection has a social, religious, economic and tourist significance. It is even more important than the connection between Jerusalem and Ramallah. The area is also important for the expansion of Beit Safafa, which has become an isolated town between Gilo and Har Homa settlements. Abu Ala’: To address natural growth. Livni: Now we are talking about natural growth?!13

Amid the intensive 2008 exchanges under the Annapolis Process, the PA’s own statistics presented stark evidence of ongoing Israeli bad faith. Indeed, while the PA diplomats were meeting their US and Israeli counterparts, the number of illegal Israeli settlement housing tenders was 17 times the number the previous year (2,300 v. 137). The Papers contain a December 2008 internal PLO report cataloguing how:

In East Jerusalem alone, Israeli authorities have advanced plans for nearly 10,000 housing units in Israeli settlements since Annapolis ... Israeli authorities demolished at least 338 Palestinian homes and other structures in the year since Annapolis, 99 of them in East Jerusalem.14

Motivated by a desire to prove themselves after Camp David 2000, as “Palestinians for peace,” the PA leadership continued shopping the May 4 maps, presenting them to the incoming Obama administration as a sign of their good faith. President Abbas personally deposited the maps with President Obama during their first meeting in Washington in May 2009, initialing them to signal his willingness to continue using them as a basis for a final agreement.

The Obama Administration appeared no more moved by the Palestinian offer than the former governments of George W. Bush or Ehud Olmert. In a meeting with US Middle East envoy Mitchell on October 21, 2009, an exasperated Erekat in effect asks the Obama administration to decide unilaterally Palestine’s borders—a request almost guaranteed to work to Palestinians’ detriment, given America’s longstanding bias in favor of Israel:

Erekat: All these issues I’ve negotiated. They need decisions. The same applies to the percentage. A decision on what percentage. We offered 2%. They said no. So what’s the percentage? You can go back to the document we gave president Obama in May.15

The Papers also make painfully clear the extent to which the United States has attempted to further the hostile takeover of Palestinian land. It reached unprecedented levels in April 2004, in a letter written by President George W. Bush to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the operative portions reading:

As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”16

It is important when reading the Papers to understand the impact those fateful words had on the behavior of the American negotiators, as they moved between “judge” of Palestinian behavior to full-on “jury” of deciding final-status issues, including Jerusalem.

Using the 2003 Road Map, which was supposed to create a Palestinian State by 2005, the United States assigned itself the role of judging the “performance” of both parties. A revolving door of monitors, including several US generals, trickled through the West Bank - almost all of them focused exclusively on Palestinian security “performance,” discussed in greater detail later.