Report: Palestinians agreed to give up most of East Jerusalem





Palestine papers: Saeb Erekat

Senior Palestinian negotiator from 2008 who has been involved in talks for nearly 20 years despite lack of street credibility



  • Ian Black, Middle East editor
  • guardian.co.uk, Sunday 23 January 2011 20.00 GMT <li class="history">Article history
    Senior-Palestinian-negoti-007.jpg
    Senior Palestinian negotiator from 2008, Saeb Erekat's sense of drama has enlivened hundreds of negotiations. Photograph: Muhammed Muheisen/AP Saeb Erekat has been negotiating with Israel on and off for nearly 20 years, beginning as vice-chairman of the Palestinian team at the landmark Madrid peace conference in 1991.
    Erekat's wisecracking style and sense of drama has enlivened hundreds of meetings &#8211; although he comes across in the leaked documents as slightly manic and often sarcastic. "Even rabbits have a defence mechanism," the PLO's chief negotiator quipped during a discussion of how Palestinians could deal with provocations by Israel.
    Born in Jericho, where he still lives, in 1955, he studied political science in the US and acquired a green card. He lectured at An-Najah University in Nablus before doing a doctorate in peace studies in Bradford. He was placed under house arrest during the first intifada in 1987 and banned by Israel from travelling abroad.
    Erekat resigned as a negotiator when the secret Oslo accords were made public in 1993, but became the only leading West Banker to join Yasser Arafat's inner circle after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. He served as a minister and an MP, and took part in the 2000 Camp David and 2001 Taba peace talks.
    With little street credibility and no experience in the armed struggle he has no natural power base in an often brutal political environment, but remains a member of the influential Fatah central committee. He has held on to his position despite efforts by rivals to break what one US report described as his "near monopoly on the negotiating process". Aaron David Miller, a veteran American negotiator, recalled in his memoirs how in Oslo in 1998 he witnessed "Saeb's colleagues hound and pound him so badly that they literally drove him out of the room".
    Erekat told American and Israeli officials during the most recent negotiations that he felt his daughters were ashamed of him and his wife saw him as weak because of the Palestinians' failure to make tangible progress towards freedom and independence.
    The Palestine papers show that his sense of humour becomes more self-deprecating when he is under pressure: "If someone sneezes in Tel Aviv, I get the flu in Jericho."
 




Palestine papers: Saeb Erekat

Senior Palestinian negotiator from 2008 who has been involved in talks for nearly 20 years despite lack of street credibility



  • Ian Black, Middle East editor
  • guardian.co.uk, Sunday 23 January 2011 20.00 GMT <li class="history">Article history
    Senior-Palestinian-negoti-007.jpg
    Senior Palestinian negotiator from 2008, Saeb Erekat's sense of drama has enlivened hundreds of negotiations. Photograph: Muhammed Muheisen/AP Saeb Erekat has been negotiating with Israel on and off for nearly 20 years, beginning as vice-chairman of the Palestinian team at the landmark Madrid peace conference in 1991.
    Erekat's wisecracking style and sense of drama has enlivened hundreds of meetings – although he comes across in the leaked documents as slightly manic and often sarcastic. "Even rabbits have a defence mechanism," the PLO's chief negotiator quipped during a discussion of how Palestinians could deal with provocations by Israel.
    Born in Jericho, where he still lives, in 1955, he studied political science in the US and acquired a green card. He lectured at An-Najah University in Nablus before doing a doctorate in peace studies in Bradford. He was placed under house arrest during the first intifada in 1987 and banned by Israel from travelling abroad.
    Erekat resigned as a negotiator when the secret Oslo accords were made public in 1993, but became the only leading West Banker to join Yasser Arafat's inner circle after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. He served as a minister and an MP, and took part in the 2000 Camp David and 2001 Taba peace talks.
    With little street credibility and no experience in the armed struggle he has no natural power base in an often brutal political environment, but remains a member of the influential Fatah central committee. He has held on to his position despite efforts by rivals to break what one US report described as his "near monopoly on the negotiating process". Aaron David Miller, a veteran American negotiator, recalled in his memoirs how in Oslo in 1998 he witnessed "Saeb's colleagues hound and pound him so badly that they literally drove him out of the room".
    Erekat told American and Israeli officials during the most recent negotiations that he felt his daughters were ashamed of him and his wife saw him as weak because of the Palestinians' failure to make tangible progress towards freedom and independence.
    The Palestine papers show that his sense of humour becomes more self-deprecating when he is under pressure: "If someone sneezes in Tel Aviv, I get the flu in Jericho."
 
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Leaked documents: who was serious about a deal to end the conflict?

Disclosure of Palestine Papers rebut Israeli claims that there is 'no partner for peace'




Ariel-settlement-in-the-W-006.jpg
A construction site in Ariel, a West Bank settlement that Palestinian negotiators refused to concede. Photograph: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images The Palestine Papers - the cache of documents from Israel-Palestine peace negotiations over the past decade which the Guardian is revealing this week - make fascinating reading for anyone interested in both the history and the future of this place.
Many Palestinians will be shocked at how much their negotiators were prepared to offer to reach a deal in 2008 - on settlements and on the right of return of refugees.
But there's another side of this coin too - the documents also show the Palestinians were serious about negotiating, and were willing to make big and painful concessions for peace and to secure their dream of a state.
From the papers I've read, there is little evidence of the Israelis matching this approach by making serious and painful concessions of their own.
Indeed Tzipi Livni is fairly dismissive of the offer on East Jerusalem settlements, focussing on what the Palestinians would not agree to, rather than acknowledging the magnitude of what they were prepared to concede.
Among the settlement blocs that the Palestinians were not willing to give up were Ariel and Ma'ale Adumim.
Ariel, the long finger-like settlement which stretches far into the West Bank, almost cutting it in two, has long been in contention. The Israelis insist they must keep it - it's home to 20,000 people; the Palestinians argue that it makes a contiguous state pretty much impossible. They also point out in the talks that Ariel sits on (and blocks their access to) a major aquifer, which they need for water - a rarely talked-about final status issue.
But it has long been assumed - at least among the Israelis - that Ma'ale Adumim (population: 35,000), the huge city east of Jerusalem stretching towards Jericho, part of the ring of settlements which cut East Jerusalem off from the West Bank, will be on the Israeli side of any future border. The Palestinians' unexpected refusal to give it up shows some mettle.
Of course, we don't know if this was a negotiating position, and whether Ma'ale Adumim would have been a card to play closer to a deal.
But it seems to me that after the disclosure of these papers, it will be very hard indeed for the Israelis to deploy their standard argument that the Palestinians are not serious about negotiating a deal and that they have no "partner for peace".
&#8226; Comments on this article are set to remain open for 12 hours from the time of publication but may be closed overnight
 
No time to lose in the Middle East peace process

Far from a picture of despair, the Palestine papers reveal how much both sides have invested in a deal. We need renewed will.




  • The-Jewish-settlement-of--007.jpg
    The Jewish settlement of Hashmonaim, dating from the mid 1980s, in the West Bank. Photograph: Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images During the last two years, Israelis and Palestinians have not marked an inch of progress towards the hoped for two-state solution. It is high time the international community mobilised serious efforts in that direction.
    Israelis and Palestinians spent years negotiating the intertwined core issues of Jerusalem, the holy sites, the refugees, territory, borders and settlements, and security. I believe that we know what a final agreement will ultimately look like. Since President Clinton's parameters were laid down in December 2000, every political initiative to ending the conflict has led to the same fundamental solutions. The recent leak of Palestinian documents proves it.
    It seems that there has never been a shortage in ideas, plans and initiatives. Moreover, the convergences between the parties throughout this period have been apparently more substantive than publicly revealed to date.
    In Israel, time is running out for those who want to secure a Jewish and democratic state within recognised boundaries alongside a demilitarised Palestinian state. True, polls consistently demonstrate that Israelis overwhelmingly support the two-state solution. But this majority has not been heard politically. Israelis are starting to realise that, and are getting their act together to change this discourse. They say: we are proud to be Israeli, Jewish and Zionist, and refuse to apologise for it. We would like to secure this identity for generations &#8211; and, for that purpose, a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel is imperative.
    In the absence of a capable leadership in the Middle East, a series of conditions should be considered by the US and its allies in this endeavor in order to reverse the course of the process for the benefit of all parties concerned.
    First, there is a need to combine the bilateral approach with a regional one, thus establishing a supportive Arab coalition for a possible Israeli-Palestinian agreement, and providing further opportunities for negotiations and trade-offs. To the detriment of the PLO, Israel's interlocutor since Oslo in 1993, Gaza is governed by Iranian-backed Hamas, a brutal terrorist organisation, dedicated to the destruction of Israel. It is only under a regional framework that the Gaza timebomb could possibly be addressed. The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative represents a significant and strategic shift in the Arab League's approach to resolving the dispute. It should serve as a basis for further negotiations.
    Second, it is crucial to win the individual and collective hearts and minds of the peoples in the region. We need to prepare the ground ahead of time for tough decisions to be taken towards peaceful co-existence. It is essential gradually to change the public's mindset by creating a new vocabulary, a fresh discourse, even if that means tackling what were once taboos. Until today, little thought was given to the preparation of public opinion. Media coverage focused on what the respective parties are likely to be giving up, rather than on the benefits of peace. And so mutual hostility continued unchecked.
    Third, the architecture of the Oslo process must be reframed. It seems essential to change the "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" paradigm of Camp David, Taba and Annapolis &#8211; into "what has been agreed should be implemented". Such an approach would open the way for an agreement on boundaries, security, statehood and the economy. Subsequently, the negotiations over Jerusalem and the refugees will continue in a state-to-state fashion.
    Fourth, seeking the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be based anymore on falsified grounds, distorted truths and double standards vis-à-vis Israel, thus encouraging anti-Israel terrorism. Pursuing Israeli settlement relocation, within a final territorial agreement, should follow 1967 United Nations security council resolution 242. The resolution was drawn up by Lord Caradon, UK representative at the UN who stated:
    "We didn't say there should be a withdrawal to the [19]'67 line; we did not put the 'the' in, we did not say all the territories, deliberately &#8230; We did not say that the '67 boundaries must be forever; it would be insanity."
    The British foreign secretary at the time, George Brown, said:
    "I have been asked over and over again to clarify, modify or improve the wording, but I do not intend to do that &#8230; Before we submitted it to the council, we showed it to the Arab leaders. The proposal said 'Israel will withdraw from territories that were occupied', and not from 'the' territories, which means that Israel will not withdraw from all territories."
    And finally, tangible coordination on the ground should be promoted, enabling the bottom-up progress to sustain a political dialogue. Since 2007, we have seen in the West Bank a genuine Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation. In that climate, self-interest starts to supersede mistrust between the parties, as has been demonstrated in steady economic growth, rapid institutional development and improved welfare.
    It is essential that President Obama should find without delay a mechanism to resume negotiations between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Yes, all three face a different set of domestic problems, but the US president should insist on maintaining a rigid negotiation framework with a binding agenda from which the parties cannot be allowed to depart. There is a reasonable chance of reaching a partial agreement on territory, security and the establishment of the Palestinian state within the president's remaining effective term.
    The two-state solution is not only in the interest of Israel: it is clearly in the interest of the United States, Europe and the moderate Arab world to enhance global peace and stability.
    &#8226; Comments on this article will close at 18:00 on Monday 24 January
 
No time to lose in the Middle East peace process

Far from a picture of despair, the Palestine papers reveal how much both sides have invested in a deal. We need renewed will.




  • The-Jewish-settlement-of--007.jpg
    The Jewish settlement of Hashmonaim, dating from the mid 1980s, in the West Bank. Photograph: Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images During the last two years, Israelis and Palestinians have not marked an inch of progress towards the hoped for two-state solution. It is high time the international community mobilised serious efforts in that direction.
    Israelis and Palestinians spent years negotiating the intertwined core issues of Jerusalem, the holy sites, the refugees, territory, borders and settlements, and security. I believe that we know what a final agreement will ultimately look like. Since President Clinton's parameters were laid down in December 2000, every political initiative to ending the conflict has led to the same fundamental solutions. The recent leak of Palestinian documents proves it.
    It seems that there has never been a shortage in ideas, plans and initiatives. Moreover, the convergences between the parties throughout this period have been apparently more substantive than publicly revealed to date.
    In Israel, time is running out for those who want to secure a Jewish and democratic state within recognised boundaries alongside a demilitarised Palestinian state. True, polls consistently demonstrate that Israelis overwhelmingly support the two-state solution. But this majority has not been heard politically. Israelis are starting to realise that, and are getting their act together to change this discourse. They say: we are proud to be Israeli, Jewish and Zionist, and refuse to apologise for it. We would like to secure this identity for generations – and, for that purpose, a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel is imperative.
    In the absence of a capable leadership in the Middle East, a series of conditions should be considered by the US and its allies in this endeavor in order to reverse the course of the process for the benefit of all parties concerned.
    First, there is a need to combine the bilateral approach with a regional one, thus establishing a supportive Arab coalition for a possible Israeli-Palestinian agreement, and providing further opportunities for negotiations and trade-offs. To the detriment of the PLO, Israel's interlocutor since Oslo in 1993, Gaza is governed by Iranian-backed Hamas, a brutal terrorist organisation, dedicated to the destruction of Israel. It is only under a regional framework that the Gaza timebomb could possibly be addressed. The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative represents a significant and strategic shift in the Arab League's approach to resolving the dispute. It should serve as a basis for further negotiations.
    Second, it is crucial to win the individual and collective hearts and minds of the peoples in the region. We need to prepare the ground ahead of time for tough decisions to be taken towards peaceful co-existence. It is essential gradually to change the public's mindset by creating a new vocabulary, a fresh discourse, even if that means tackling what were once taboos. Until today, little thought was given to the preparation of public opinion. Media coverage focused on what the respective parties are likely to be giving up, rather than on the benefits of peace. And so mutual hostility continued unchecked.
    Third, the architecture of the Oslo process must be reframed. It seems essential to change the "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" paradigm of Camp David, Taba and Annapolis – into "what has been agreed should be implemented". Such an approach would open the way for an agreement on boundaries, security, statehood and the economy. Subsequently, the negotiations over Jerusalem and the refugees will continue in a state-to-state fashion.
    Fourth, seeking the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be based anymore on falsified grounds, distorted truths and double standards vis-à-vis Israel, thus encouraging anti-Israel terrorism. Pursuing Israeli settlement relocation, within a final territorial agreement, should follow 1967 United Nations security council resolution 242. The resolution was drawn up by Lord Caradon, UK representative at the UN who stated:
    "We didn't say there should be a withdrawal to the [19]'67 line; we did not put the 'the' in, we did not say all the territories, deliberately … We did not say that the '67 boundaries must be forever; it would be insanity."
    The British foreign secretary at the time, George Brown, said:
    "I have been asked over and over again to clarify, modify or improve the wording, but I do not intend to do that … Before we submitted it to the council, we showed it to the Arab leaders. The proposal said 'Israel will withdraw from territories that were occupied', and not from 'the' territories, which means that Israel will not withdraw from all territories."
    And finally, tangible coordination on the ground should be promoted, enabling the bottom-up progress to sustain a political dialogue. Since 2007, we have seen in the West Bank a genuine Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation. In that climate, self-interest starts to supersede mistrust between the parties, as has been demonstrated in steady economic growth, rapid institutional development and improved welfare.
    It is essential that President Obama should find without delay a mechanism to resume negotiations between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Yes, all three face a different set of domestic problems, but the US president should insist on maintaining a rigid negotiation framework with a binding agenda from which the parties cannot be allowed to depart. There is a reasonable chance of reaching a partial agreement on territory, security and the establishment of the Palestinian state within the president's remaining effective term.
    The two-state solution is not only in the interest of Israel: it is clearly in the interest of the United States, Europe and the moderate Arab world to enhance global peace and stability.
    • Comments on this article will close at 18:00 on Monday 24 January
 
wale wanajua kabisa kuwa hawawezi kuupata mji wa Jerusalemu hata kwa ndoto ndio maaana wanaona ni bora tu wakubali..
 
The Palestine Papers
Expelling Israel's Arab population?
Israeli negotiators, including Tzipi Livni, proposed "swapping" some of Israel's Arab villages into a Palestinian state.

Gregg Carlstrom Last Modified: 24 Jan 2011 19:42 GMT






2011124105959770112_20.jpg
Israel's separation wall cuts through the middle of Baqa, dividing it into two villages. [Gregg Carlstrom/Al Jazeera]
Baqa al-Gharbiyya, Israel – This sleepy agricultural village, an hour’s drive northeast from Tel Aviv, feels worlds apart from Israel’s commercial capital. Garbage lines many of the narrow, rutted streets, symptoms of the lower level of government funding bestowed upon the town; unemployed men mill about, complaining that Israel’s policies have hurt the local economy.
Identity and nationality


Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s hard-right foreign minister, has proposed annexing this and other Arab villages to a future Palestinian state. Their inhabitants would be stripped of their Israeli citizenship unless they were willing to leave their land and swear a “loyalty oath” to the state.
His plan is deeply unpopular here and in nearby villages. Despite the discrimination most Arabs experience in Israel, they say few will renounce their Israeli citizenship to become Palestinians.
"I’m here in this state now," said Jamil, the owner of a small bakery near one of the town's green-domed mosques. "My family has been here since before 1948. I don’t want to go out to Palestine. I don’t like the wars, I have problems with the [Israeli] government, but a Palestinian state? No."
Liberal Israeli commentators have denounced Lieberman’s plan as racist, but centrist and left-wing Israeli politicians have been more muted in their criticism, leading many Israeli Arabs to believe that their country’s political leadership tacitly supports Lieberman’s plan.
"He’s shouting what they are not saying," said Ihad Abu Mokh, a lifelong Baqa al-Gharbiyya resident, over coffee in a busy café earlier this month. "They dream it. But they know this is the 21st century. We are not in the Dark Ages now."
"Divided. All Palestinian. All Israeli."

But The Palestine Papers reveal that Tzipi Livni, Israel's former foreign minister, did say it: During several 2008 meetings with Palestinian negotiators, Livni proposed annexing Arab villages to the future Palestinian state, forcing tens of thousands of Israeli Arabs to choose between their citizenship and their land.
Related

Ali Abunimah: Obama shift on 1967 line opens door to Palestine population transfer
"The US position on borders perhaps unwittingly opens the door to dangerous Israeli ambitions to transfer -- or ethnically cleanse -- non-Jewish Palestinian citizens of Israel in order to create an ethnically pure 'Jewish state.'"

Her clearest language came on June 21, 2008, when she told senior Palestinian negotiators Ahmed Qurei and Saeb Erekat that their land swaps should include Israeli Arab villages. Udi Dekel, a top adviser to the then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, rattled off a list of villages that would be annexed to Palestine.
Livni: We have this problem with Raja [Ghajar] in Lebanon. Terje Larsen put the blue line to cut the village in two. [This needs to be addressed.] We decided not to cut the village. It was a mistake. The problem now, those living on Lebanese soil are Israeli citizens.
Dekel: Barka, Barta il Sharqiya, Barta il [Garbiya], Betil, Beit Safafa…
Qurei: This will be difficult. All Arabs in Israel will be against us.
Becker: We will need to address it somehow. Divided. All Palestinian. All Israeli.
Two months earlier, in another meeting with Qurei and Erekat, Livni herself mentioned the same villages, describing them – their status in the state of Israel – as a problem in need of resolution.
Livni: Let us be fair. You referred to 1967 line. We have not talked about Jerusalem yet. There are some Palestinian villages that are located on both sides of the 1967 line about which we need to have an answer, such as Beit Safafa, Barta’a, Baqa al-Sharqiyeh and Baqa al-Gharbiyyeh.
Livni’s choice of words is striking. Beit Safafa, Barta’a and Baqa al-Gharbiyya all sit at least partly on the Israeli side of the Green Line; their inhabitants carry Israeli passports, pay taxes to the Israeli government, and overwhelmingly self-identify as Israelis.
But Livni describes them as Palestinians – and suggests that they do not belong in the state of Israel.
"I was born in Israel. I’m not leaving."

Baqa al-Gharbiyya used to be just Baqa, a name still used by many residents. The creation of the state of Israel split the village in half, with Baqa al-Gharbiyya on the west side of the 1948 armistice line and Baqa al-Sharqiyya on the east.
“No question of carrying out a transfer”

Livni has described the Palestinian state as a solution to the “national aspirations” of the Palestinian people, and she uses that term to include Israeli Arabs.
This was her language from a November 2007 meeting with the French foreign minister:
“The idea of creating a Palestinian state is to give a national answer to the Palestinians, wherever they are. Those who live in the territories, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, those who live outside of the territories, whether they live in different refugee camps or in Israel – it’s the national answer to them.”
She was criticized for her comments; Israel’s popular Nana10 Web portal ran an opinion piece comparing her to Avigdor Lieberman. But she used similar language a year later, when she described a Palestinian state as “a national solution” for Israeli Arabs.
Livni quickly tried to clarify her comments, telling Israeli radio in December 2008 that “there is no question of carrying out a transfer of forcing them to leave.”

Residents regularly travelled back and forth between the two until six years ago, when the Israeli separation barrier was built. Several streets in the villages now dead-end at an eight-metre-high concrete wall topped with barbed wire.
Those who live in Baqa al-Gharbiyya face what they, and many Israeli and international human rights groups, describe as systemic prejudice. Israeli Arabs routinely face discrimination when applying for jobs, and their towns and villages often receive a lower level of government funding than Jewish communities.
In its 2009 report, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel described the discrimination faced by Arabs as "open and explicit", and warned that the government is threatening "their most basic rights – to equality, education and employment – as well as their very citizenship".
"Look around this village, you see the streets, the cars, the buildings, how it looks,” said Mustafa Fayoum, a resident of the Arab village of Jaljulia. “Compare it to Tel Aviv. You will see the difference.”
Yet Qurei was right when he said that Arabs in Israel would oppose a transfer to Palestine: In dozens of interviews on a visit earlier this month, only one Baqa al-Gharbiyya resident said he would prefer to live in a Palestinian state.
Asked why, many cited economic reasons; even the jobless thought their future prospects were better in Israel.
"Our circumstances here are better than there, even though here we don’t feel that we are in the community, or in the society of the Jewish people," said Bashar al-Alimi, an unemployed 38-year-old.
"It’s a difficult question," said Mounir Abu Hussain, a 34-year-old mechanic. "But my job is here, the work is good here, and maybe it would be hard to go into a Palestinian state."
"[Israel] is a Western country, it’s more developed, there are more options, less corruption," said Ismail Athmani, 34. "And I was born in Israel. I’m not leaving."
But the economy wasn’t the only reason why Baqa al-Gharbiyya residents said they prefer Israel to Palestine. Several described the West Bank as a police state, and said that – despite the discrimination they face – they prefer the level of political freedom in Israel.
"It’s bad in the West Bank. We have family there, we hear things. The police in Palestine, you can’t talk about politics unless you’re in the most closed-off place. Otherwise you die," Athmani said.
His friend Abu Mokh leaned across the table to interrupt him. "Not die," he said with a rueful grin. "You just disappear."
A widespread view

Polls of Israeli Arabs over the last decade have consistently reached a similar finding: most would rather remain in Israel than live under Palestinian jurisdiction.
A December 2010 survey by the Brookings Institution found that 58 per cent of Israeli Arabs oppose the sorts of swaps proposed by Lieberman and Livni. The Jewish-Arab Relations Index, an annual publication from the University of Haifa, consistently finds majority support for that view (57 per cent in the most recent survey, in 2008). Similarly, a 2000 poll of Umm al-Fahm residents found that 83 per cent want their city to remain Israeli.
Many families in these villages have lived in Israel since before 1948 – before there was a state of Israel, in other words. One man described himself as "more Israeli than Lieberman," referring to the Soviet Union-born foreign minister who immigrated to Israel at the age of 20.
"Netanyahu cannot take me and tell me, ‘you are living here,’" Fayoum said. "I am Israeli, only Israeli."
 
The Palestine Papers
PA selling short the refugees
Palestinian Authority proposed that only a handful of the nearly six million Palestinian refugees be allowed to return.

Laila Al-Arian Last Modified: 24 Jan 2011 19:41 GMT
2011124162451314965_20.jpg
Many Palestinian refugees still live in camps like Bourj el Barajneh, in Lebanon [Laila Al-Arian/Al Jazeera]
At the Bourj el Barajneh refugee camp in southern Beirut, a centre for the elderly serves as an oasis from the overcrowded, filthy conditions outside its metal doors.
The right of return


On a recent Thursday morning, a group of men and women in their 60s and 70s gathered around a table to colour and draw pictures, while others solved crossword puzzles. One woman sitting in the corner focused intently as she embroidered a traditional Palestinian dress. The Active Ageing House in the refugee camp is a place where they can pass time, socialise and share meals.
They are known as the "Children of the Nakba" - a generation of Palestinians that witnessed, and survived, the forced expulsion and violence in 1948 committed by Zionist paramilitaries on behalf of the nascent state of Israel.
They each have a story about how they or their parents managed to escape their homeland over 60 years ago - and their wounds are still raw.
Some six million Palestinian refugees are scattered around the world, including more than 400,000 in Lebanon. Here, they are deprived of basic rights, not permitted to buy or sell property, and are banned from more than 70 job categories. Mired in abject poverty, they are dependent on an increasingly incapable United Nations agency for aid.
A "symbolic number" of returnees

The Palestine Papers show that Palestinian Authority (PA) negotiators were prepared to make major concessions on the refugees' right of return: on the numbers potentially allowed to return to their homes in what is now Israel; on whether refugees would be able to vote on any peace agreement; and on how many would be able to settle in a future Palestinian state.
Children of the Nakba

Kamel Shraydeh, a 76-year-old retired teacher living in Bourj el-Barajneh, was born in the Palestinian village of Safsaf, a few kilometers from the northern city of Safed in present-day Israel. In October 1948, dozens of villagers, including ten members of the Shraydeh family, were massacred by Israeli soldiers. Shraydeh was 13 years old at the time, but he was tall and looked older than his age. Israeli soldiers, he said, were seizing, and in some cases executing, boys as young as 14 and 15. His parents, fearing for his life, cut off the bottom of his pants so he would appear shorter and younger.
Read more »

In an email Ziyad Clot, a legal adviser to Palestinian negotiators on the refugee file, writes, "President [Mahmoud] Abbas offered an extremely low proposal for the number of returnees to Israel a few weeks only after the start of the process."
The papers also reveal that then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proposed that 1,000 Palestinian refugees be allowed to return annually to Israel over a period of five years - totalling just 5,000, a tiny fraction of those displaced after Israel's creation.
On January 15, 2010, Erekat told US diplomat David Hale that the Palestinians offered Israel the return of "a symbolic number" of refugees.
According to the documents, not only did Palestinian officials offer a low figure of returnees, the chief negotiator of the PLO, Saeb Erekat, said that refugees would not have voting rights on a possible peace deal with Israel.
Notes of a meeting on March 23, 2007, between Erekat and then-Belgian foreign minister Karel De Gucht, reveal that Erekat said, "I never said the Diaspora will vote. It's not going to happen. The referendum will be for Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Can't do it in Lebanon. Can't do it in Jordan."
While Erekat conceded the rights of Palestinian refugees to determine their own fate, during such meetings Israeli negotiators made clear their vision for the refugees.
In a negotiation meeting on January 27, 2008, then-Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, told her Palestinian counterparts, "Your state will be the answer to all Palestinians including refugees. Putting an end to claims means fulfilling national rights for all."
Related

"We can't refer to the past"
Israel refuses to take responsibility for creating the Palestinian refugee crisis.
Amira Howeidy: PA relinquished right of return
Palestinian negotiators are engaged in talks that they know have ceded almost every Palestinian right.
Ali Abunimah: Jordan, PLO clash on refugee issue
The PLO appears to be vigorously defending its right to solely decide on the refugee issue with Israel.

Erekat seemed to buy into this idea. In a meeting with US diplomats, including Special Envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, on October 21, 2009, Erekat said, "Palestinians will need to know that five million refugees will not go back. The number will be agreed as one of the options. Also the number returning to their own state will depend on annual absorption capacity".
So even a future Palestinian state could not accommodate the millions of displaced who would want to settle there.
Al Jazeera spoke with three dozen refugees in the Burj al-Barajneh camp, from ages 16 to 88, and they all expressed the same sentiment: They want to return to their native homeland, and to have a say in any final settlement between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel.
Shafiqa Shalan, 60, who was born in Burj al-Barjnah, said she would not agree to being settled in Palestine. "What's the difference?" she said. "We're refugees in Lebanon and we would be refugees in the West Bank. So we might as well stay here. I would not consider it my home. My homeland is the village where my parents were expelled."
That sentiment was echoed among younger residents of the camp. Ruwaida Al-Daher, 47, who was also born in Bourj el Barajneh, said, "We ask for the right of return because he who has no country has no dignity. We live like dogs here. But I would still oppose going to the West Bank or Gaza. Why would I go back to any place but my hometown?"
Al-Daher said she would not want to become a Lebanese citizen if that were offered to her under any peace deal &#8211; and that Palestinian negotiators had no mandate to make concessions on her behalf.
"The right of return is a personal right. It's sacred," she said. "No one can cancel it or take it away."
 
The Palestine Papers
PA selling short the refugees
Palestinian Authority proposed that only a handful of the nearly six million Palestinian refugees be allowed to return.

Laila Al-Arian Last Modified: 24 Jan 2011 19:41 GMT

2011124162451314965_20.jpg
Many Palestinian refugees still live in camps like Bourj el Barajneh, in Lebanon [Laila Al-Arian/Al Jazeera]
At the Bourj el Barajneh refugee camp in southern Beirut, a centre for the elderly serves as an oasis from the overcrowded, filthy conditions outside its metal doors.
The right of return


On a recent Thursday morning, a group of men and women in their 60s and 70s gathered around a table to colour and draw pictures, while others solved crossword puzzles. One woman sitting in the corner focused intently as she embroidered a traditional Palestinian dress. The Active Ageing House in the refugee camp is a place where they can pass time, socialise and share meals.
They are known as the "Children of the Nakba" - a generation of Palestinians that witnessed, and survived, the forced expulsion and violence in 1948 committed by Zionist paramilitaries on behalf of the nascent state of Israel.
They each have a story about how they or their parents managed to escape their homeland over 60 years ago - and their wounds are still raw.
Some six million Palestinian refugees are scattered around the world, including more than 400,000 in Lebanon. Here, they are deprived of basic rights, not permitted to buy or sell property, and are banned from more than 70 job categories. Mired in abject poverty, they are dependent on an increasingly incapable United Nations agency for aid.
A "symbolic number" of returnees

The Palestine Papers show that Palestinian Authority (PA) negotiators were prepared to make major concessions on the refugees' right of return: on the numbers potentially allowed to return to their homes in what is now Israel; on whether refugees would be able to vote on any peace agreement; and on how many would be able to settle in a future Palestinian state.
Children of the Nakba

Kamel Shraydeh, a 76-year-old retired teacher living in Bourj el-Barajneh, was born in the Palestinian village of Safsaf, a few kilometers from the northern city of Safed in present-day Israel. In October 1948, dozens of villagers, including ten members of the Shraydeh family, were massacred by Israeli soldiers. Shraydeh was 13 years old at the time, but he was tall and looked older than his age. Israeli soldiers, he said, were seizing, and in some cases executing, boys as young as 14 and 15. His parents, fearing for his life, cut off the bottom of his pants so he would appear shorter and younger.
Read more »

In an email Ziyad Clot, a legal adviser to Palestinian negotiators on the refugee file, writes, "President [Mahmoud] Abbas offered an extremely low proposal for the number of returnees to Israel a few weeks only after the start of the process."
The papers also reveal that then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proposed that 1,000 Palestinian refugees be allowed to return annually to Israel over a period of five years - totalling just 5,000, a tiny fraction of those displaced after Israel's creation.
On January 15, 2010, Erekat told US diplomat David Hale that the Palestinians offered Israel the return of "a symbolic number" of refugees.
According to the documents, not only did Palestinian officials offer a low figure of returnees, the chief negotiator of the PLO, Saeb Erekat, said that refugees would not have voting rights on a possible peace deal with Israel.
Notes of a meeting on March 23, 2007, between Erekat and then-Belgian foreign minister Karel De Gucht, reveal that Erekat said, "I never said the Diaspora will vote. It's not going to happen. The referendum will be for Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Can't do it in Lebanon. Can't do it in Jordan."
While Erekat conceded the rights of Palestinian refugees to determine their own fate, during such meetings Israeli negotiators made clear their vision for the refugees.
In a negotiation meeting on January 27, 2008, then-Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, told her Palestinian counterparts, "Your state will be the answer to all Palestinians including refugees. Putting an end to claims means fulfilling national rights for all."
Related

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Amira Howeidy: PA relinquished right of return
Palestinian negotiators are engaged in talks that they know have ceded almost every Palestinian right.
Ali Abunimah: Jordan, PLO clash on refugee issue
The PLO appears to be vigorously defending its right to solely decide on the refugee issue with Israel.

Erekat seemed to buy into this idea. In a meeting with US diplomats, including Special Envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, on October 21, 2009, Erekat said, "Palestinians will need to know that five million refugees will not go back. The number will be agreed as one of the options. Also the number returning to their own state will depend on annual absorption capacity".
So even a future Palestinian state could not accommodate the millions of displaced who would want to settle there.
Al Jazeera spoke with three dozen refugees in the Burj al-Barajneh camp, from ages 16 to 88, and they all expressed the same sentiment: They want to return to their native homeland, and to have a say in any final settlement between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel.
Shafiqa Shalan, 60, who was born in Burj al-Barjnah, said she would not agree to being settled in Palestine. "What's the difference?" she said. "We're refugees in Lebanon and we would be refugees in the West Bank. So we might as well stay here. I would not consider it my home. My homeland is the village where my parents were expelled."
That sentiment was echoed among younger residents of the camp. Ruwaida Al-Daher, 47, who was also born in Bourj el Barajneh, said, "We ask for the right of return because he who has no country has no dignity. We live like dogs here. But I would still oppose going to the West Bank or Gaza. Why would I go back to any place but my hometown?"
Al-Daher said she would not want to become a Lebanese citizen if that were offered to her under any peace deal &#8211; and that Palestinian negotiators had no mandate to make concessions on her behalf.
"The right of return is a personal right. It's sacred," she said. "No one can cancel it or take it away."
 
The Palestine Papers
Deep frustrations with Obama
Obama pressured PA negotiators to restart talks and refused to honour one of the Bush administration's key promises.

Gregg Carlstrom Last Modified: 24 Jan 2011 19:42 GMT





201112411535593833_20.jpg
The Palestine Papers reveal the extent to which the Obama administration orchestrated this 2009 handshake [EPA]
Jerusalem &#8211; It was all smiles in late September 2009, when Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, shook hands at the United Nations. Barack Obama, the US president, brought the men together for a trilateral meeting that he hailed as a chance to revive stalled talks between the two sides, an opportunity to "move forward".
In reality, there was little reason for optimism, and Obama knew it: Less than a week before the handshake, Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator of the Palestinian Authority (PA), told a senior Obama adviser that a trilateral meeting would be ruinous for the PA. "It's like having a gun to my head, damned if you do and damned if you don't," Erekat told David Hale.
Erekat also warned that Obama's failure to secure a complete settlement freeze from the Israeli government would damage the credibility of the young administration, a suggestion Hale abruptly dismissed.
Hale: We cannot force a sovereign government. We can use persuasion and negotiations and shared interests.
Erekat: Of course you could if you wanted. How do you think this will reflect on the credibility of the US, if you can't get this done?
Hale: We make the call on our own credibility.
Sixteen months later, though, Erekat's concerns seem well-founded: talks have stalled, settlements continue to expand, and the optimism that Obama created with his campaign rhetoric and his Cairo speech has largely evaporated.
The Palestine Papers portray an Obama administration deeply concerned with the "optics" of the peace process. The White House leaned heavily on Palestinian negotiators to restart talks, without resolving any of the substantive concerns &#8211; particularly settlement growth &#8211; raised by the PA. And Obama refused to honour one of the Bush administration's key promises to the Palestinians, a decision that Erekat said deeply hurt the PA's credibility.
Talks at all costs

Abbas told Obama early in the latter's presidency that Israeli-Palestinian talks would not be credible without a complete Israeli settlement freeze. Erekat e-mailed the PA's Negotiation Support Unit in June 2009 and summarised a meeting in Washington between the two leaders:
"Are you serious about the two-state solution?" Abbas asked, according to Erekat. "If you are, I cannot comprehend that you would allow a single settlement housing unit to be built in the West Bank&#8230; you have the choice. You can take the cost free road, applying double standards, which would shoot me and other moderates in the head and make this Bin Laden's region. Or say we are not against Israel but against Israel's actions. If you cannot make Israel stop settlements and resume permanent status negotiations, who can?"
Obama chose the first option: Netanyahu rejected the US president's request for a complete settlement freeze, agreeing only to suspend new construction in the West Bank (thousands of new tenders were issued in East Jerusalem during the freeze period). But the White House accepted the offer, and Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, would later praise Israel for its "unprecedented" concession".
Dennis Ross, the State Department's unabashedly pro-Israel envoy, tried to put a positive spin on Netanyahu's offer during that September 2009 meeting in Jericho attended by Hale and Erekat.
Ross: The package includes no new tenders, no new confiscation&#8230;
Erekat: I'm not coming from Mars! 40% of the West Bank is already confiscated. They can keep building for years without new tenders.
And in an October 1, 2009 meeting, Mitchell downplayed the importance of Jerusalem, telling Erekat to take comfort in Israel's offer of "restraint". "With negotiations, we will have more leverage, and there will be less settlement activity [in East Jerusalem]," Mitchell said, according to an NSU summary of the meeting.
"The Obama way"


The facts on the ground, however, show that Mitchell's confidence was misplaced: During the 10-month West Bank freeze, the Jerusalem municipality approved, among other projects, 1,600 housing tenders in Ramat Shlomo; 377 in Neve Yaakov; 230 in Pisgat Ze'ev; 117 in Har Homa; and 20 in Sheikh Jarrah.
(Settlers in the West Bank quickly made up for lost time, too: They started 1,629 new houses in six weeks after the freeze ended, nearly as many as they started in all of 2009, according to the Israeli group Peace Now.)
Relaunch, don't resume

Obama's capitulation on settlements wasn't the only complaint from Palestinian negotiators, either.
The Palestine Papers reveal that, in the months after the Annapolis conference, Condoleezza Rice, the then-US secretary of state, explicitly endorsed using 1967 borders as a baseline for negotiations. On July 16, 2008, she tells Erekat and Ahmed Qurei that any proposed land swaps should use 1967 as a reference.
Rice: I believe that the assumptions should be, the US will [secure this]. Any swaps will be in reference to the area occupied in 1967. When they [the Israelis] talk about 7.3 [per cent] they are talking about this.
Two weeks later, her language is even clearer: "1967 as a baseline," Rice told Erekat and Qurei.
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"The US is perfectly willing to abandon the requirements of the Road Map as well as its insistence on a settlement freeze. In doing so, Mitchell and his team repeat the mistakes of Camp David; they become Israel's lawyer."

Palestinian negotiators viewed that declaration as a significant victory &#8211; the first time a senior US official had endorsed such a baseline.
But it would prove to be a short-lived victory. In early October 2009, Erekat met in Washington with George Mitchell, Obama's Middle East envoy. Erekat asked about the "terms of reference", the framework that would guide negotiations, and reminded Mitchell of Rice's promise. "This is a new administration that should state what others have tacitly agreed in the past," Erekat told Mitchell on October 1. But Mitchell refused, saying that the US "would not agree to any mention of '67 whatsoever" in order to avoid "difficulties with the Israelis".
The next day, Mitchell warned Erekat not to press the issue any further:
Mitchell: Again I tell you that President Obama does not accept prior decisions by Bush. Don't use this because it can hurt you. Countries are bound by agreements &#8211; not discussions or statements.
Erekat: But this was an agreement with Sec. Rice.
[...]
[US state department legal adviser Jonathan] Schwartz: It is not legally binding &#8211; not an agreement.
Erekat: For God's sake, she said to put it on the record. It was the basis for the maps.
This sense of moving backwards was a common Palestinian complaint during meetings with Obama officials. In September 2009, Erekat asked Hale why the administration opted to "relaunch" rather than "resume" negotiations. Hale, like Mitchell, described past agreements with the US as non-binding:
Hale: We prefer "relaunch" since there was no agreement &#8211; nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.
Erekat: There is a detailed record of our negotiations. The US administration kept it &#8211; it is perhaps our only achievement with the Bush administration. And so much for Obama and rapprochement&#8230; there is not a new word! Give me something at least to save face!
Hale: There is a lot of new stuff.
Erekat's frustrations reached a peak in late October 2009, when he met at the White House with then-national security adviser James Jones. Erekat told Jones that Netanyahu had already outmaneuvered the Obama administration:
Erekat: I am planning to go on Israeli channel 10 to say one thing: congratulations Mr. Netanyahu. You defeated President Obama. You defeated Abu Mazen&#8230; if it's my word against theirs in your Congress and your Senate, I know I do not stand a chance.
Obama is today said to be "seeking new ideas" on the peace process from two task forces led by former White House officials. But the question of borders &#8211; which The Palestine Papers demonstrate was the key issue during negotiations in 2009 &#8211; remains unresolved.
 
The Palestine Papers
"We can't refer to the past"
Israel refuses to take responsibility for creating the Palestinian refugee crisis.

Laila Al-Arian Last Modified: 24 Jan 2011 19:41 GMT





2011124134511257833_20.jpg
Nearly six million Palestinian refugees live in countries around the world [EPA]
It's a core issue of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that dates back to Israel's creation: the forced expulsion in 1948 of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes by Israeli soldiers and Jewish paramilitary groups. But The Palestine Papers show that far from resolving this thorny problem, Israeli negotiators refused to even acknowledge their responsibility in creating the world's largest refugee population.
Some of the most contentious meetings between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators involved the "refugee file". On several occasions, Israeli officials insisted that negotiators should move forward and forget "the past", even as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians continue to languish in refugee camps under abysmal conditions. As talks on refugees progressed during the Annapolis process, Israeli negotiators were aided by the US and French officials, who took their side on the issue of responsibility.
On March 24, 2008, Tzipi Livni, the then-Israeli foreign minister, said Israel alone should not bear the cost of financial compensation for Palestinian refugees in any final peace agreement. "Compensating refugees is an international matter," she told Palestinian negotiators, "and that is why reference to responsibility would be wrong. [The reason for this is] because it was a problem for all Arab states, then it became a Palestinian Israeli conflict, with the Arabs on the sidelines asking for a resolution".
Livni went on to say that Israelis, too, should be compensated.
Livni: "What about the people who suffered from terror attacks, are you going to apologise?"
Saeb Erekat [PA chief negotiator]: "We do. We condemn each one."
Livni: "People suffer during war. People suffer with their lives. They die. We can relate both of us to the suffering."
By August 31, 2008, these converging ideas on "suffering" were included in an offer conveyed by Ehud Olmert, the then-Israeli prime minister, to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. It was delivered orally and without a traceable paper; and it was appallingly vague, diluting even the most basic refugee rights. The Palestinian Authority (PA) later summarised the offer in an internal confidential memo:
Refugees


  • Israel would acknowledge the suffering of &#8211; but not responsibility for &#8211; Palestinian refugees (language is in the preamble). In parallel, there must also be a mention of Israeli (or Jewish) suffering.
  • Israel would take in 1,000 refugees per year for a period of 5 years on "humanitarian" grounds. In addition, programmes of "family reunification" would continue.
  • Israel would contribute to the compensation of the refugees through the mechanism and based on suffering.
  • Not clear what the heads of damage for compensation would be, just that there would be no acknowledgement of responsibility for the refugees, and that compensation, and not restitution or return (apart from the 5,000), would be the only remedy.
Two weeks later, on September 14, 2008, lawyers from the Negotiation Support Unit of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) supplied Abbas with detailed questions for Olmert, which subsequently went unanswered:

  • What does it mean to acknowledge the suffering of refugees, without reference to responsibility? How is that different from acknowledging the suffering of people as a result of, say, a natural disaster? How do you propose to deal with the issue of responsibility?
  • If you recognise suffering, why do you refuse to deal with compensation for non-material damages?
  • Why is the suffering of Israelis relevant to the refugee issue?
As Livni attempted to minimise the scope of Palestinian suffering caused by Israel's creation and colonisation of Palestinian land, she also suggested that Palestinians close the book on their grievances once and for all, telling PLO negotiator Ahmed Qurei: "I feel like we can't refer to the past". To which Qurei replied: "I do not want to go back to the past to become its slave but to pave the way for the future."
Related

"I never said the Diaspora will vote"
The Palestinian Authority proposed that only a handful of the nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees be allowed to return.
Amira Howeidy: PA relinquished right of return
Palestinian negotiators are engaged in talks that they know have ceded almost every Palestinian right.
Ali Abunimah: Jordan, PLO clash on refugee issue
The PLO appears to be vigorously defending its right to solely decide on the refugee issue with Israel.

Three months earlier, on June 21, 2008, Livni had once again tried to deflect blame and to draw moral equivalence between Israelis and Palestinians. "Instead of responsibility we can talk of suffering of both our people," she said. "By the way on responsibility &#8211; whose responsibility is it for keeping them in the camps? The Arab world! Responsibility is not just about the war, but what happened after. For creating false hope. [We need to address also] the Jewish refugees. Maybe as part of the international fund."
Erekat's reply: "But we never caused anything to the Jews. This will not be in an agreement."
In a US-Palestinian bilateral meeting on July 16 of that year, Condoleezza Rice, the then-US secretary of state, echoed Livni's sentiment, telling Palestinians that the responsibility is not Israel's alone, and that, anyway, they need to move on.
Condoleezza Rice: "If you want to talk about responsibility it is the responsibility of the international community, not Israel. They created Israel."
[Zeinah Salahi (of the PLO's Negotiation Support Unit) argues that Israeli actions post-statehood are clearly their responsibility. This is dismissed by Rice.]
Rice: Responsibility is a loaded term. [Notes the example of reparations for slavery in the US.] I've always objected to it. It's not forward looking. Would I personally be better off? I don't know. But I do support affirmative action. [&#8230;] Bad things happen to people all around the world all the time. You need to look forward.
Sensing that the US involvement in the refugee argument was not productive and its stance far from objective, on August 14, Erekat said American mediators should be excluded from this particular discussion:
Erekat: Recognition of responsibility is a bilateral issue. I don't want the Americans to be involved in this.
Tal Becker [senior adviser to Livni]: Our respective narratives cannot be reconciled. You think you are the victims. We think we are the victims.
But French officials held a similar view to the Americans. According to an email by PLO legal adviser Ziyad Clot summarising a meeting with a French delegation, then-foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said "since Israel was created under the auspices of the UN, the International Community must pay". A Palestinian representative then suggested "the Brits have a major responsibility in the creation of the issue", a statement that apparently went over well with the visitors. "The French loved it," the email states.
Bernard Koucher also asked about "the status of the discussion between Israeli and Palestinian leaderships on that issue, his view being that it is the most difficult problem".
Indeed, many people would agree with that assessment. But without an acknowledgment or apology from Israel on the refugee crisis, it's an issue that's unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.
 
The Palestine Papers
"We can't refer to the past"
Israel refuses to take responsibility for creating the Palestinian refugee crisis.

Laila Al-Arian Last Modified: 24 Jan 2011 19:41 GMT





2011124134511257833_20.jpg
Nearly six million Palestinian refugees live in countries around the world [EPA]
It’s a core issue of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that dates back to Israel’s creation: the forced expulsion in 1948 of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes by Israeli soldiers and Jewish paramilitary groups. But The Palestine Papers show that far from resolving this thorny problem, Israeli negotiators refused to even acknowledge their responsibility in creating the world's largest refugee population.
Some of the most contentious meetings between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators involved the "refugee file". On several occasions, Israeli officials insisted that negotiators should move forward and forget "the past", even as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians continue to languish in refugee camps under abysmal conditions. As talks on refugees progressed during the Annapolis process, Israeli negotiators were aided by the US and French officials, who took their side on the issue of responsibility.
On March 24, 2008, Tzipi Livni, the then-Israeli foreign minister, said Israel alone should not bear the cost of financial compensation for Palestinian refugees in any final peace agreement. "Compensating refugees is an international matter," she told Palestinian negotiators, "and that is why reference to responsibility would be wrong. [The reason for this is] because it was a problem for all Arab states, then it became a Palestinian Israeli conflict, with the Arabs on the sidelines asking for a resolution".
Livni went on to say that Israelis, too, should be compensated.
Livni: "What about the people who suffered from terror attacks, are you going to apologise?"
Saeb Erekat [PA chief negotiator]: "We do. We condemn each one."
Livni: "People suffer during war. People suffer with their lives. They die. We can relate both of us to the suffering."
By August 31, 2008, these converging ideas on "suffering" were included in an offer conveyed by Ehud Olmert, the then-Israeli prime minister, to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. It was delivered orally and without a traceable paper; and it was appallingly vague, diluting even the most basic refugee rights. The Palestinian Authority (PA) later summarised the offer in an internal confidential memo:
Refugees


  • Israel would acknowledge the suffering of – but not responsibility for – Palestinian refugees (language is in the preamble). In parallel, there must also be a mention of Israeli (or Jewish) suffering.
  • Israel would take in 1,000 refugees per year for a period of 5 years on "humanitarian" grounds. In addition, programmes of "family reunification" would continue.
  • Israel would contribute to the compensation of the refugees through the mechanism and based on suffering.
  • Not clear what the heads of damage for compensation would be, just that there would be no acknowledgement of responsibility for the refugees, and that compensation, and not restitution or return (apart from the 5,000), would be the only remedy.
Two weeks later, on September 14, 2008, lawyers from the Negotiation Support Unit of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) supplied Abbas with detailed questions for Olmert, which subsequently went unanswered:

  • What does it mean to acknowledge the suffering of refugees, without reference to responsibility? How is that different from acknowledging the suffering of people as a result of, say, a natural disaster? How do you propose to deal with the issue of responsibility?
  • If you recognise suffering, why do you refuse to deal with compensation for non-material damages?
  • Why is the suffering of Israelis relevant to the refugee issue?
As Livni attempted to minimise the scope of Palestinian suffering caused by Israel’s creation and colonisation of Palestinian land, she also suggested that Palestinians close the book on their grievances once and for all, telling PLO negotiator Ahmed Qurei: "I feel like we can’t refer to the past". To which Qurei replied: "I do not want to go back to the past to become its slave but to pave the way for the future."
Related

"I never said the Diaspora will vote"
The Palestinian Authority proposed that only a handful of the nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees be allowed to return.
Amira Howeidy: PA relinquished right of return
Palestinian negotiators are engaged in talks that they know have ceded almost every Palestinian right.
Ali Abunimah: Jordan, PLO clash on refugee issue
The PLO appears to be vigorously defending its right to solely decide on the refugee issue with Israel.

Three months earlier, on June 21, 2008, Livni had once again tried to deflect blame and to draw moral equivalence between Israelis and Palestinians. "Instead of responsibility we can talk of suffering of both our people,” she said. "By the way on responsibility – whose responsibility is it for keeping them in the camps? The Arab world! Responsibility is not just about the war, but what happened after. For creating false hope. [We need to address also] the Jewish refugees. Maybe as part of the international fund.”
Erekat’s reply: "But we never caused anything to the Jews. This will not be in an agreement."
In a US-Palestinian bilateral meeting on July 16 of that year, Condoleezza Rice, the then-US secretary of state, echoed Livni’s sentiment, telling Palestinians that the responsibility is not Israel’s alone, and that, anyway, they need to move on.
Condoleezza Rice: “If you want to talk about responsibility it is the responsibility of the international community, not Israel. They created Israel.”
[Zeinah Salahi (of the PLO’s Negotiation Support Unit) argues that Israeli actions post-statehood are clearly their responsibility. This is dismissed by Rice.]
Rice: Responsibility is a loaded term. [Notes the example of reparations for slavery in the US.] I’ve always objected to it. It’s not forward looking. Would I personally be better off? I don’t know. But I do support affirmative action. […] Bad things happen to people all around the world all the time. You need to look forward.
Sensing that the US involvement in the refugee argument was not productive and its stance far from objective, on August 14, Erekat said American mediators should be excluded from this particular discussion:
Erekat: Recognition of responsibility is a bilateral issue. I don’t want the Americans to be involved in this.
Tal Becker [senior adviser to Livni]: Our respective narratives cannot be reconciled. You think you are the victims. We think we are the victims.
But French officials held a similar view to the Americans. According to an email by PLO legal adviser Ziyad Clot summarising a meeting with a French delegation, then-foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said "since Israel was created under the auspices of the UN, the International Community must pay". A Palestinian representative then suggested "the Brits have a major responsibility in the creation of the issue", a statement that apparently went over well with the visitors. "The French loved it," the email states.
Bernard Koucher also asked about "the status of the discussion between Israeli and Palestinian leaderships on that issue, his view being that it is the most difficult problem".
Indeed, many people would agree with that assessment. But without an acknowledgment or apology from Israel on the refugee crisis, it’s an issue that’s unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.
 
The Palestine Papers Jordan, PLO clash on refugee issue
The PLO appears to be vigorously defending its right to solely decide on the refugee issue with Israel.

Ali Abunimah Last Modified: 24 Jan 2011 19:42 GMT





Leaked documents reveal that Jordan had a serious disagreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) over the latter's approach to negotiating with Israel over the rights of Palestinian refugees. Jordanian officials felt the PLO's approach could compromise Jordan's and the refugees' rights to seek full remedies under international law.
201112411940648797_20.jpg

In early September 2008, the Jordanian government drafted a letter, to be sent to Israel, expressing objections to the potential solutions to the refugee issue that were being discussed between Israel and Palestinian negotiators.
Jordan was concerned that the "international mechanism" which Israel and the PLO had agreed on to act as the sole forum for handling refugee claims would prejudice Jordan's rights to pursue claims for the costs it says it has borne as a host country, and potentially damage the ability of Palestinian refugees living in Jordan to exercise their individual rights as refugees.
Under proposals whose major outlines were agreed between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators, refugees' options would be limited to financial compensation, with the right of return for refugees to homes now in Israel limited to all but a symbolic handful of individuals.
Under proposals contained in a 2007 draft for a "Permanent Status Agreement" found among the Palestine Papers, the number of refugees allowed to return to homes now in Israel would be capped at 10,000 per year for ten years. Israel, according to Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat in a confidential June 2009 briefing to his staff, has proposed accepting just one thousand refugees per year over ten years. Even if Israel were to allow 100,000, it would represent a fraction of Palestinian refugees and in an effect an annulment of the right of return.
The Jordanians also argued that the proposed "international mechanism" would violate the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace treaty. After setting out its misgivings the draft letter from the Jordanian foreign ministry to the Israeli government stated: "Jordan, therefore, reserves its rights under international law and the 1994 Treaty of Peace in relation to the refugee issue and would not acquiesce to any process or a resolution to which it is not party that would exclude or limit its legal standing and rights relating to the refugee issue, including state rights and individual rights."
PA: Jordan has "no legal standing"

A few days after the Jordanian draft was sent to the Palestinians, an assessment of the Jordanian position by the PLO's Negotiations Support Unit (NSU) stated, "the question of the Jordanian state's legal capacity to endorse the claims of the Palestinian refugees who are Jordanian citizens is currently being analyzed by our external consultants."
A legal memo -- apparently containing the external analysis though not indicated who it was by -- strongly contested any Jordanian claim to represent even its own citizens who are Palestinian refugees. Citing a single obscure legal reference unrelated to refugee rights or international law on refugees, the memo makes the extraordinary claim that, "It is well settled that Jordan has no standing under international law to espouse claims on behalf of its nationals for loss, damage or injury that occurred before the acquisition by such individuals of Jordanian nationality."
Related

"I never said the Diaspora will vote"
The Palestinian Authority proposed that only a handful of the nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees be allowed to return.
"We can't refer to the past"
Israel refuses to take responsibility for creating the Palestinian refugee crisis.
Amira Howeidy: PA relinquished right of return
Palestinian negotiators are engaged in talks that they know have ceded almost every Palestinian right.

Even more extraordinary, the NSU memo even disputes whether Jordan has the right to represent its own citizens in claims for damages against Israel which occurred while the claimants were already citizens of Jordan.
Another document found in The Palestine Papers archive is a copy of the Jordanian letter with text labeled "PLO comments" inserted between the lines.
This document states, "The PLO is internationally recognized as the representative of the Palestinian people, including refugees. Jordan's argument that it has standing to bring claims on behalf of refugees cannot apply to Palestinian refugees residing in Jordan but who are not Jordanian nationals. In addition, under international law, it is highly questionable that Jordan would have standing to espouse claims on behalf of its citizens for loss, damage or injury that occurred before the acquisition by these individuals of Jordanian citizenship."
The document offers no references for these assertions. On 19-20 September 2008, Ziyad Clot, the legal advisor of the PLO met in Amman with Mahmoud Hmoud, the head of the Legal Department of the Jordanian Foreign Ministry, to discuss the dispute. According to leaked minutes of the Amman meeting written by Clot, "Both advisors agreed that it is not in interest of the PLO or Jordan, nor that of the refugees.' to challenge the other party's alleged standing to represent refugees."
Clot also asserts that he presented the PLO's ideas for the "International Mechanism" to the Jordanian side, which responded that such a mechanism "could be appropriate" and that "the Jordanians would be ready to support the proposal, especially if the US agrees to it."
Nevertheless, the minutes also record that "The Jordanian side has not yet decided at this stage whether the letter should be transmitted to the Israelis." It is unclear whether Jordan ever placed its objections on the reocord by sending the letter to Israel.
The 2008 dispute recalls earlier episodes of mistrust between Jordan and the PLO during the peace process. Jordanian officials were angered when news broke in 1993 of the Oslo accords, secretly negotiated between Israel and the PLO. Jordanian offials felt that the talks, carried out behind their backs, undermined the peace talks then going on in Washington in which Jordan was a participant, and that a separate deal between Israel and the PLO could come at the detriment of Jordanian interests.
For Palestinian refugees, the concern must be that the PLO appears to be vigorously defending its right to solely decide on the refugee issue with Israel, while at the same time appearing willing to make substantial compromises on the rights of refugees, including effectively giving up the right of return for all but a tiny, symbolic number of Palestinians.
Ali Abunimah is author of One Country, A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and is a contributor to the newly-released book The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict. He is a co-founder of the widely read online publication The Electronic Intifada, an award-winning online publication about Palestine and the Palestine conflict. He has written hundreds of articles on the question of Palestine for publications all over the world, including Al Jazeera.
 
The Palestine Papers Jordan, PLO clash on refugee issue
The PLO appears to be vigorously defending its right to solely decide on the refugee issue with Israel.

Ali Abunimah Last Modified: 24 Jan 2011 19:42 GMT





Leaked documents reveal that Jordan had a serious disagreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) over the latter's approach to negotiating with Israel over the rights of Palestinian refugees. Jordanian officials felt the PLO's approach could compromise Jordan's and the refugees' rights to seek full remedies under international law.
201112411940648797_20.jpg

In early September 2008, the Jordanian government drafted a letter, to be sent to Israel, expressing objections to the potential solutions to the refugee issue that were being discussed between Israel and Palestinian negotiators.
Jordan was concerned that the "international mechanism" which Israel and the PLO had agreed on to act as the sole forum for handling refugee claims would prejudice Jordan's rights to pursue claims for the costs it says it has borne as a host country, and potentially damage the ability of Palestinian refugees living in Jordan to exercise their individual rights as refugees.
Under proposals whose major outlines were agreed between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators, refugees' options would be limited to financial compensation, with the right of return for refugees to homes now in Israel limited to all but a symbolic handful of individuals.
Under proposals contained in a 2007 draft for a "Permanent Status Agreement" found among the Palestine Papers, the number of refugees allowed to return to homes now in Israel would be capped at 10,000 per year for ten years. Israel, according to Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat in a confidential June 2009 briefing to his staff, has proposed accepting just one thousand refugees per year over ten years. Even if Israel were to allow 100,000, it would represent a fraction of Palestinian refugees and in an effect an annulment of the right of return.
The Jordanians also argued that the proposed "international mechanism" would violate the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace treaty. After setting out its misgivings the draft letter from the Jordanian foreign ministry to the Israeli government stated: "Jordan, therefore, reserves its rights under international law and the 1994 Treaty of Peace in relation to the refugee issue and would not acquiesce to any process or a resolution to which it is not party that would exclude or limit its legal standing and rights relating to the refugee issue, including state rights and individual rights."
PA: Jordan has "no legal standing"

A few days after the Jordanian draft was sent to the Palestinians, an assessment of the Jordanian position by the PLO's Negotiations Support Unit (NSU) stated, "the question of the Jordanian state’s legal capacity to endorse the claims of the Palestinian refugees who are Jordanian citizens is currently being analyzed by our external consultants."
A legal memo -- apparently containing the external analysis though not indicated who it was by -- strongly contested any Jordanian claim to represent even its own citizens who are Palestinian refugees. Citing a single obscure legal reference unrelated to refugee rights or international law on refugees, the memo makes the extraordinary claim that, "It is well settled that Jordan has no standing under international law to espouse claims on behalf of its nationals for loss, damage or injury that occurred before the acquisition by such individuals of Jordanian nationality."
Related

"I never said the Diaspora will vote"
The Palestinian Authority proposed that only a handful of the nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees be allowed to return.
"We can't refer to the past"
Israel refuses to take responsibility for creating the Palestinian refugee crisis.
Amira Howeidy: PA relinquished right of return
Palestinian negotiators are engaged in talks that they know have ceded almost every Palestinian right.

Even more extraordinary, the NSU memo even disputes whether Jordan has the right to represent its own citizens in claims for damages against Israel which occurred while the claimants were already citizens of Jordan.
Another document found in The Palestine Papers archive is a copy of the Jordanian letter with text labeled "PLO comments" inserted between the lines.
This document states, "The PLO is internationally recognized as the representative of the Palestinian people, including refugees. Jordan’s argument that it has standing to bring claims on behalf of refugees cannot apply to Palestinian refugees residing in Jordan but who are not Jordanian nationals. In addition, under international law, it is highly questionable that Jordan would have standing to espouse claims on behalf of its citizens for loss, damage or injury that occurred before the acquisition by these individuals of Jordanian citizenship."
The document offers no references for these assertions. On 19-20 September 2008, Ziyad Clot, the legal advisor of the PLO met in Amman with Mahmoud Hmoud, the head of the Legal Department of the Jordanian Foreign Ministry, to discuss the dispute. According to leaked minutes of the Amman meeting written by Clot, "Both advisors agreed that it is not in interest of the PLO or Jordan, nor that of the refugees.’ to challenge the other party’s alleged standing to represent refugees."
Clot also asserts that he presented the PLO's ideas for the "International Mechanism" to the Jordanian side, which responded that such a mechanism "could be appropriate" and that "the Jordanians would be ready to support the proposal, especially if the US agrees to it."
Nevertheless, the minutes also record that "The Jordanian side has not yet decided at this stage whether the letter should be transmitted to the Israelis." It is unclear whether Jordan ever placed its objections on the reocord by sending the letter to Israel.
The 2008 dispute recalls earlier episodes of mistrust between Jordan and the PLO during the peace process. Jordanian officials were angered when news broke in 1993 of the Oslo accords, secretly negotiated between Israel and the PLO. Jordanian offials felt that the talks, carried out behind their backs, undermined the peace talks then going on in Washington in which Jordan was a participant, and that a separate deal between Israel and the PLO could come at the detriment of Jordanian interests.
For Palestinian refugees, the concern must be that the PLO appears to be vigorously defending its right to solely decide on the refugee issue with Israel, while at the same time appearing willing to make substantial compromises on the rights of refugees, including effectively giving up the right of return for all but a tiny, symbolic number of Palestinians.
Ali Abunimah is author of One Country, A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse and is a contributor to the newly-released book The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict. He is a co-founder of the widely read online publication The Electronic Intifada, an award-winning online publication about Palestine and the Palestine conflict. He has written hundreds of articles on the question of Palestine for publications all over the world, including Al Jazeera.
 
The Palestine Papers PA relinquished right of return
Palestinian negotiators are engaged in talks that they know have ceded almost every Palestinian right.

Amira Howeidy Last Modified: 24 Jan 2011 19:42 GMT





Ahmed Qurei: What do you want from Jordan?
Tzipi Livni: A Palestinian state. This is a joke. I didn't mean that.
February 11, 2008
It's highly unlikely that Livni, Israel's then-foreign minister and former Mossad agent, was joking when she said the above. Judging from what Livni is quoted as saying to Palestinian negotiators in The Palestine Papers, her humour is probably a half Freudian slip. Jordan was, after all, proposed as one "host" country for Palestinian refugees &#8211; with the blessing of Palestinian negotiators. And that's no joke.
2011124141232372738_20.jpg

From the onset of the Palestinian-Israeli talks 18 years ago, the right of return (ROR) (together with Jerusalem and borders) were marketed to the Palestinian and Arab public as "sensitive" issues that were repeatedly postponed under the pretext of &#8216;final status talks.' As the negotiations never progressed to reach any finality, it appears that they were only meant to convey to the Palestinian negotiators the fact that Israel will not allow the return of refugees. What The Palestine Papers reveal is that the Palestinian Authority accepts this.
While Jerusalem's religious, historic and cultural value for the Arabs is obvious, its significance could be viewed as more symbolic than crucial for the existence of the Palestinians in a viable state. But the biggest nightmare for Israel is the issue of 6 million Palestinian refugees who, as per UN resolution 194, have the right to return to their homeland &#8211; from which they were forced to leave by Zionist gangs and their massacres between 1947 and 1949. During that time, 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed.
Article 11 of resolution 194 "resolves":
"That the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.
Those 800,000 are now approximately six million, currently living in destitution in refugee camps in bordering Arab states, particularly Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. The rest have settled across the Arab world, the US and Europe.
The demographic "threat"

What Palestinians consider an "inalienable and sacred right" &#8211; as enshrined in UN resolutions, International law and international humanitarian law &#8211; is viewed by Israel as a threat to its existence.
By the end of 2010, Israel's Jewish population stood at 5.8 million. With 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, 2.5 million in the West Bank, 1.4 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, and between 5 and 6 million refugees, the total number of Palestinians totals approximately 10 million, which not only outnumbers the Jews in Israel, but defeats &#8211;if they succeed in claiming their right to return &#8211; the ideal of a purely "Jewish" state.
Related

"I never said the Diaspora will vote"
The Palestinian Authority proposed that only a handful of the nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees be allowed to return.
"We can't refer to the past"
Israel refuses to take responsibility for creating the Palestinian refugee crisis.
Ali Abunimah: Jordan, PLO clash on refugee issue
The PLO appears to be vigorously defending its right to solely decide on the refugee issue with Israel.

In other words, if even a fraction of the refugees exercise their right to return, they challenge the existence of the Zionist project.
The Palestine Papers portray a weak Palestinian leadership that appears willing to relinquish the right of return (ROR) in various ways.
In one instance, chief negotiator Saeb Erekat bluntly tells then-Belgian foreign minister Karel de Gucht on March 23, 2007 that the PA "will not give up refugees before permanent status negotiations" take place. Which means it is willing to give up their rights, but only after negotiations reach the final status stage i.e. Jerusalem, borders, settlements and refugees.
As Erekat indicates in the same meeting, most Palestinian refugees don't count. He tells de Gucht that should the Palestinians hold a referendum on a final status agreement the diaspora will not vote: "It's not going to happen." The referendum "will be for Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Can't do it in Lebanon. Can't do it in Jordan." Perhaps Erekat knows that the large Palestinian populations in those countries would never accept the concessions he seems willing to make.
Worse, Erekat tells Livni on 13 November 2007, ahead of the Annapolis Conference:
Erekat: "We've never denied Israel's right to define itself. If you want to call yourself the Jewish state of Israel-you can call it what you want. (Notes the examples of Iran and Saudi Arabia)."
By making this acknowledgment, Erekat &#8211; contrary to what he or other PA officials say in public &#8211; recognizes Israel as a Jewish state, with the implications this has on both the Palestinians living with Israel as second-class citizens whose very existence is under threat, or as refugees seeking to go home.
In the same pre-Annapolis meeting, Livni outlines the definition of two states: one is purely Jewish, the other for the Palestinians.
Livni: Israel the state of the Jewish people -- and I would like to emphasize the meaning of "its people" is the Jewish people -- with Jerusalem the united and undivided capital of Israel and of the Jewish people for 3007 years...
The Palestinian delegation protests. But she continues to define the Palestinian state:
Livni: &#8230; and Palestine for the Palestinian people. We did not want to say that there is a "Palestinian people" but we've accepted your right to self-determination&#8230; If we can't say two states for two people then we have a problem.
Livni chooses her words carefully. She avoids the term "two-state solution," and emphasizes "two states" for "two people." The all-Jewish Israeli state will have borders which diverge from the 1967 line, cutting deep into occupied Palestinian territory include the illegal Israeli settlements within its borders. Palestinians already living there will not exist within those borders.
And needless to say, she is conveying that, ultimately, there is no place for Palestinian refugees to return to their original homes within what has become Israel.
"An extremely low proposal"

As shocking as her words are, Qurei and the five members representing the Palestinian side, including Saeb Erekat, apparently did not react, protest or attempt to object to her hints of ethnic cleansing their own people.
Two months later, in a meeting between Qurei and Livni on 27 January 2008, Qurei appears compromising on the Palestinian refugees' right of return, by suggesting &#8211; in line with the decades-old Israeli solution of the issue &#8211; that Arab countries host them for good.
Qurei: As for the refugees, if the Arabs will be part of the solution there will be no problem in this issue. We've to engage countries that host the refugees directly or indirectly.
In the same meeting Livni recounts her vision of a pure Jewish state, and tells Qurei that Palestinian refugees can only return to what should become a Palestinian state.
Livni: The conflict we're trying to solve is between two peoples. They used to say there were no Palestinian people; my father used to say so too. They used to say Palestinians were Arabs so let them find a solution in an Arab country. The basis for the creation of the state of Israel is that it was created for the Jewish people. Your state will be the answer to all Palestinians including refugees. Putting an end to claims means fulfilling national right for all.
So what does the PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas do?
According to an email document from Ziyad Clot, a member of the Negotiations Support Unit (which was part of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's negotiations department) on July 24, 2008:
"Abu Mazen offered an extremely low proposal for the number of returnees to Israel a few weeks only after the start of the process [in Annapolis]."
Clot describes the Palestinian leadership as "weak" and adds that, as a result of the "pressure" on Abbas, Qurei and Erekat regarding the refugees, "there is clear risk" they will "comply with US instructions and discuss the [refugee] issue under the conditions imposed by the US."
But months earlier, Palestinian negotiators appear accepting of the Israeli vision for the refugees. In a meeting on 22 January 2008 with Erekat and Qurei, Livni talks about "compensation for host countries" for Palestinian refugees during "multilateral talks." Qurei doesn't object to the principle of relinquishing the right of these refugees to return, and instead replies that this will be discussed "confidentially" with host countries.
When Livni asks who will talk to Jordan (which hosts 1,951,603 Palestinian refugees) about the refugees, Qurei suggests "the US, Europe and the Quartet," adding that "later we may engage Syria and Lebanon in the talks for the resettlement or return of refugees."
Here Livni tells Qurei: "I don't want to deceive anybody. There'll be no Israeli official whether from the Knesset or the government or even the public who will support the return of refugees to Israel. There are many people in the world who are ready to contribute to the issue of refugees."
By 2009, PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat admits to Mideast envoy George Mitchell that "19 years after the start of the process, it is time for decisions. Negotiations have been exhausted&#8230; Palestinians will need to know that 5 million refugees will not go back."
It's bewildering how, despite Livni's clarity on the refugee problem, the same Palestinian negotiators are engaged in talks that they know have ceded almost every Palestinian right.
Now that their concessions are documented and out in the open, can any of these negotiators claim they were deceived by Livni's honesty?
Amira Howeidy has been an Egyptian journalist since 1992. She has published extensively on Palestinian rights, human rights, civil liberties, Egypt's domestic scene and dissent movements. Amira is currently assistant editor-in-chief of the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Weekly Newspaper and is the Cairo correspondent of the Lebanese daily Assafir. She co-authored a book on Informal Settlements in Greater Cairo and co-produced the award-winning documentary Geuvara &#8216;ash (Geuvra lives) in 2009.
 
The Palestine Papers PA relinquished right of return
Palestinian negotiators are engaged in talks that they know have ceded almost every Palestinian right.

Amira Howeidy Last Modified: 24 Jan 2011 19:42 GMT




Ahmed Qurei: What do you want from Jordan?
Tzipi Livni: A Palestinian state. This is a joke. I didn't mean that.
February 11, 2008
It’s highly unlikely that Livni, Israel’s then-foreign minister and former Mossad agent, was joking when she said the above. Judging from what Livni is quoted as saying to Palestinian negotiators in The Palestine Papers, her humour is probably a half Freudian slip. Jordan was, after all, proposed as one "host" country for Palestinian refugees – with the blessing of Palestinian negotiators. And that’s no joke.
2011124141232372738_20.jpg

From the onset of the Palestinian-Israeli talks 18 years ago, the right of return (ROR) (together with Jerusalem and borders) were marketed to the Palestinian and Arab public as “sensitive” issues that were repeatedly postponed under the pretext of ‘final status talks.’ As the negotiations never progressed to reach any finality, it appears that they were only meant to convey to the Palestinian negotiators the fact that Israel will not allow the return of refugees. What The Palestine Papers reveal is that the Palestinian Authority accepts this.
While Jerusalem’s religious, historic and cultural value for the Arabs is obvious, its significance could be viewed as more symbolic than crucial for the existence of the Palestinians in a viable state. But the biggest nightmare for Israel is the issue of 6 million Palestinian refugees who, as per UN resolution 194, have the right to return to their homeland – from which they were forced to leave by Zionist gangs and their massacres between 1947 and 1949. During that time, 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed.
Article 11 of resolution 194 “resolves”:
“That the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.
Those 800,000 are now approximately six million, currently living in destitution in refugee camps in bordering Arab states, particularly Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. The rest have settled across the Arab world, the US and Europe.
The demographic "threat"

What Palestinians consider an “inalienable and sacred right" – as enshrined in UN resolutions, International law and international humanitarian law – is viewed by Israel as a threat to its existence.
By the end of 2010, Israel’s Jewish population stood at 5.8 million. With 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, 2.5 million in the West Bank, 1.4 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, and between 5 and 6 million refugees, the total number of Palestinians totals approximately 10 million, which not only outnumbers the Jews in Israel, but defeats –if they succeed in claiming their right to return – the ideal of a purely “Jewish” state.
Related

"I never said the Diaspora will vote"
The Palestinian Authority proposed that only a handful of the nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees be allowed to return.
"We can't refer to the past"
Israel refuses to take responsibility for creating the Palestinian refugee crisis.
Ali Abunimah: Jordan, PLO clash on refugee issue
The PLO appears to be vigorously defending its right to solely decide on the refugee issue with Israel.

In other words, if even a fraction of the refugees exercise their right to return, they challenge the existence of the Zionist project.
The Palestine Papers portray a weak Palestinian leadership that appears willing to relinquish the right of return (ROR) in various ways.
In one instance, chief negotiator Saeb Erekat bluntly tells then-Belgian foreign minister Karel de Gucht on March 23, 2007 that the PA “will not give up refugees before permanent status negotiations” take place. Which means it is willing to give up their rights, but only after negotiations reach the final status stage i.e. Jerusalem, borders, settlements and refugees.
As Erekat indicates in the same meeting, most Palestinian refugees don’t count. He tells de Gucht that should the Palestinians hold a referendum on a final status agreement the diaspora will not vote: “It’s not going to happen.” The referendum “will be for Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Can't do it in Lebanon. Can’t do it in Jordan.” Perhaps Erekat knows that the large Palestinian populations in those countries would never accept the concessions he seems willing to make.
Worse, Erekat tells Livni on 13 November 2007, ahead of the Annapolis Conference:
Erekat: “We’ve never denied Israel’s right to define itself. If you want to call yourself the Jewish state of Israel—you can call it what you want. (Notes the examples of Iran and Saudi Arabia)."
By making this acknowledgment, Erekat – contrary to what he or other PA officials say in public – recognizes Israel as a Jewish state, with the implications this has on both the Palestinians living with Israel as second-class citizens whose very existence is under threat, or as refugees seeking to go home.
In the same pre-Annapolis meeting, Livni outlines the definition of two states: one is purely Jewish, the other for the Palestinians.
Livni: Israel the state of the Jewish people -- and I would like to emphasize the meaning of “its people” is the Jewish people -- with Jerusalem the united and undivided capital of Israel and of the Jewish people for 3007 years...
The Palestinian delegation protests. But she continues to define the Palestinian state:
Livni: … and Palestine for the Palestinian people. We did not want to say that there is a “Palestinian people” but we’ve accepted your right to self-determination… If we can’t say two states for two people then we have a problem.
Livni chooses her words carefully. She avoids the term “two-state solution,” and emphasizes “two states” for “two people.” The all-Jewish Israeli state will have borders which diverge from the 1967 line, cutting deep into occupied Palestinian territory include the illegal Israeli settlements within its borders. Palestinians already living there will not exist within those borders.
And needless to say, she is conveying that, ultimately, there is no place for Palestinian refugees to return to their original homes within what has become Israel.
"An extremely low proposal"

As shocking as her words are, Qurei and the five members representing the Palestinian side, including Saeb Erekat, apparently did not react, protest or attempt to object to her hints of ethnic cleansing their own people.
Two months later, in a meeting between Qurei and Livni on 27 January 2008, Qurei appears compromising on the Palestinian refugees’ right of return, by suggesting – in line with the decades-old Israeli solution of the issue – that Arab countries host them for good.
Qurei: As for the refugees, if the Arabs will be part of the solution there will be no problem in this issue. We’ve to engage countries that host the refugees directly or indirectly.
In the same meeting Livni recounts her vision of a pure Jewish state, and tells Qurei that Palestinian refugees can only return to what should become a Palestinian state.
Livni: The conflict we’re trying to solve is between two peoples. They used to say there were no Palestinian people; my father used to say so too. They used to say Palestinians were Arabs so let them find a solution in an Arab country. The basis for the creation of the state of Israel is that it was created for the Jewish people. Your state will be the answer to all Palestinians including refugees. Putting an end to claims means fulfilling national right for all.
So what does the PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas do?
According to an email document from Ziyad Clot, a member of the Negotiations Support Unit (which was part of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s negotiations department) on July 24, 2008:
“Abu Mazen offered an extremely low proposal for the number of returnees to Israel a few weeks only after the start of the process [in Annapolis].”
Clot describes the Palestinian leadership as “weak” and adds that, as a result of the “pressure” on Abbas, Qurei and Erekat regarding the refugees, “there is clear risk” they will “comply with US instructions and discuss the [refugee] issue under the conditions imposed by the US.”
But months earlier, Palestinian negotiators appear accepting of the Israeli vision for the refugees. In a meeting on 22 January 2008 with Erekat and Qurei, Livni talks about “compensation for host countries” for Palestinian refugees during “multilateral talks.” Qurei doesn’t object to the principle of relinquishing the right of these refugees to return, and instead replies that this will be discussed “confidentially” with host countries.
When Livni asks who will talk to Jordan (which hosts 1,951,603 Palestinian refugees) about the refugees, Qurei suggests “the US, Europe and the Quartet,” adding that “later we may engage Syria and Lebanon in the talks for the resettlement or return of refugees.”
Here Livni tells Qurei: “I don’t want to deceive anybody. There’ll be no Israeli official whether from the Knesset or the government or even the public who will support the return of refugees to Israel. There are many people in the world who are ready to contribute to the issue of refugees.”
By 2009, PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat admits to Mideast envoy George Mitchell that “19 years after the start of the process, it is time for decisions. Negotiations have been exhausted… Palestinians will need to know that 5 million refugees will not go back.”
It’s bewildering how, despite Livni’s clarity on the refugee problem, the same Palestinian negotiators are engaged in talks that they know have ceded almost every Palestinian right.
Now that their concessions are documented and out in the open, can any of these negotiators claim they were deceived by Livni’s honesty?
Amira Howeidy has been an Egyptian journalist since 1992. She has published extensively on Palestinian rights, human rights, civil liberties, Egypt’s domestic scene and dissent movements. Amira is currently assistant editor-in-chief of the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Weekly Newspaper and is the Cairo correspondent of the Lebanese daily Assafir. She co-authored a book on Informal Settlements in Greater Cairo and co-produced the award-winning documentary Geuvara ‘ash (Geuvra lives) in 2009.
 
Palestinian leaders slam Al-Jazeera over alleged peace process leak

By the CNN Wire Staff
January 24, 2011 -- Updated 1823 GMT (0223 HKT)

olmert.abbas.handshake.jpg

A former Israeli government official claims Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas almost reached a deal in 2008.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

  • NEW: Palestinians protest and burn Al-Jazeera banners
  • NEW: Middle East negotiator Tony Blair of Britain calls the report "absurd"
  • The Palestinian Authority president calls Al-Jazeera's report "shameful"
  • The Chief Palestinian negotiator calls some allegations "patently false"


Jerusalem (CNN) -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas lashed out Monday at Al-Jazeera, calling the Arabic TV network's release of alleged secret documents from Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations "shameful."
"The report aired by Al-Jazeera is an intentional mixing between the many Israeli proposals and the Palestinian positions," Abbas said in Cairo, Egypt, in comments published by the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
"We do not have anything secret to hide," he added. "All our negotiations and meetings and every issue discussed were presented to Arab countries with documents."
Dozens of Palestinians gathered Monday in central Ramallah, burning banners for Al-Jazeera and holding posters comparing the channel to Israel, Wafa reported.
The documents, which Al-Jazeera has dubbed "The Palestine Papers," suggest that Palestinian negotiators offered to give up large swaths of East Jerusalem to Israel during negotiations dating back to 2008. They suggest Palestinians have been willing to offer much larger concessions in private than previously acknowledged in public.
In one document from 2010, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Eraakat is quoted as telling a U.S. State Department official that the Palestinian offer would give Israel "the biggest (Jerusalem) in Jewish history."
In a statement Monday, Erekat said that "a number of reports have surfaced regarding our positions in our negotiations with Israel, many of which have misrepresented our positions, taking statements and facts out of context. Other allegations circulated in the media have been patently false."
He added, "Our position has been the same for the past 19 years of negotiations: We seek to establish a sovereign and independent Palestinian state along the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and to reach a just solution to the refugee issue based on their international legal rights," and any proposed agreement "would have to gain popular support through a national referendum."
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flower.lok.peace.talks.cnn.640x360.jpg
Palestinian documents leaked

RELATED TOPICS



Abed Rabbo, one of Abbas' top advisers, accused Al-Jazeera of a "smear campaign."
"What happened is a manipulation of the documents and a misrepresentation of the facts and a true distortion, just for mockery and defiance," Abed Rabbo told reporters.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a representative for the Middle East Quartet, told CNN he does not believe Abbas would offer as much territory as the documents suggest. The Middle East Quartet -- composed of the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations -- has been trying to broker a peace deal.
"The idea that the Palestinian leadership had been offering concessions fundamentally in disagreement with the international negotiation that's known publicly is absurd," he said, adding that Palestinian leaders have "been sometimes probably too emphatic for the rest of us in their defense of Palestinian interests."
The U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Robert Serry, weighed in as well. "I can personally attest to the commitment of the Palestinian leadership to secure the legitimate rights and interests of the Palestinian people, based on international law and U.N. resolutions," he said, as quoted by Wafa.
While the Palestinian Authority controls the West Bank, the militant group Hamas controls Gaza. Hamas quickly pounced on the Al-Jazeera reporting, condemning the Palestinian Authority team and saying it "does not have credibility to negotiate because it offered essential concessions."
"All the doubts and all the concerns of the Palestinian people and the resistance were true," Oussama Hamdan, head of Hamas foreign relations, said Monday in a CNN interview from Lebanon. "Those negotiators have no credibility and they are not authorized to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians because of the division, because there is no united Palestinian institution and because they don't have cards of power to negotiate with the Israelis."
Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist, has carried out numerous terrorist attacks and is branded a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office declined to comment.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, speaking to Israel radio, pointed out that the alleged negotiations took place under former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a more left-wing government than Netanyahu's. "If the Olmert government was not able to reach an agreement despite the far-reaching concessions, everyone understands that a long-term interim agreement is what is needed," Lieberman said.
Yanki Galanti, a former Olmert spokesman, said an agreement was almost reached during negotiations between Olmert and Abbas from the end of 2006 to September 2008.
"After dozens of meetings ... there was a proposal that was reached. ... This offer was on all the issues we call core issues," Galanti told Israeli Army radio.
The core issues in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are considered to be the status of Jerusalem, borders and refugees.
Rabbo, the Palestinian official, condemned not only Al-Jazeera, but also the leadership of Qatar, where the network is based.
"This is a first-class political smear campaign and the decision comes from the highest level in Qatar," Rabbo said, adding sarcastically, "and we thank the emir of Qatar on his commitment to transparency and to deliver the truth to a wider audience."
Referring to the "transparency" that Al-Jazeera said it was offering with its reporting, Rabbo added, "We hope that they extend this so-called 'transparency' to the greatest degree and address the role of the U.S. base in Qatar in spying on the Arab countries, and talk about Qatari relations with Iran and Israel."
The government of Qatar had no immediate comment.
On its website, Al-Jazeera says it was "given unhindered access to the largest-ever leak of confidential documents related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are nearly 1,700 files, thousands of pages of diplomatic correspondence detailing the inner workings of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. These documents -- memos, e-mails, maps, minutes from private meetings, accounts of high level exchanges, strategy papers and even (PowerPoint) presentations -- date from 1999 to 2010."
The network added, "We believe this material will prove to be of inestimable value to journalists, scholars, historians, policymakers and the general public. We know that some of what is presented here will prove controversial, but it is our intention to inform, not harm, to spark debate and reflection -- not dampen it."
Rabbo, however, accused Al-Jazeera of plotting to weaken the Palestinian Authority and Abbas, Wafa reported.
He called on independent Palestinian organizations to set up a committee to look into the authenticity of the documents, according to Wafa.
He vowed that the Palestinian Authority will not take action against Al-Jazeera staff in the Palestinian territories, the report added.
Al-Jazeera is not disclosing the source of the documents it received "over the last several months."
CNN could not immediately verify the authenticity of the documents.
U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley tweeted Sunday night, "The U.S. government is reviewing the alleged Palestinian documents released by Al-Jazeera. We cannot vouch for their veracity."
"The U.S. remains focused on a two-state solution and will continue to work with the parties to narrow existing differences on core issues," Crowley added.
Al-Jazeera said it will be revealing the documents through Wednesday.
The documents outline meetings among Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. officials in which Palestinian negotiators offered in 2008 to relinquish claims on nearly all of the settlements built in East Jerusalem. The offer was flatly rejected by the Israeli side, according to the posted documents.
Israel seized the eastern half of Jerusalem following war with its Arab neighbors in 1967 and considers it the nation's sovereign capital. The claim is rejected by the international community, which considers Israeli building in East Jerusalem to be illegal. Palestinians want the eastern part of the city as the capital for their future state.
The leaked documents could prove to be politically damaging for Abbas. Officials from the Ramallah-based government have consistently condemned growing Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, and disclosures that Palestinians officials were willing to make offers that would allow Israeli construction to continue were being seized on by critics.
Sami Abu Zhuri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said the leaked internal documents about Palestinian concessions on East Jerusalem illustrate the collaboration between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. He accused the Abbas government of working with Israel to put an end to the notion of a Palestinian state.
In addition to details about concessions made on the issue of East Jerusalem, Al-Jazeera reported that Palestinian officials also offered compromise positions on sensitive issues such as the right of return of Palestinian refugees and control of the Temple Mount, where stands the Al-Aqsa mosque, one of the most important sites in Islam.
CNN's Kevin Flower, Saad Abedine, Michal Zippori, Nic Robertson, Shira Medding, Talal Abu Rahma and Nada Husseini contributed to this report.
 
Israel asked Palestinian Authority to kill al-Aqsa commander

Leaked papers reveal close intelligence and security co-operation between two sides in Middle East conflict


  • Ian Black, Middle East editor
  • guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 25 January 2011 20.00 GMT <li class="history">Article history
    Palestinian-mourners-carr-007.jpg
    Palestinian mourners carry al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade commander Hassan al-Madhoun during his funeral after he was killed by an Israeli missile strike. Photograph: Abid Katib/Getty Images Hassan al-Madhoun got a martyr's funeral – his body borne aloft on a stretcher, blood seeping through the bandages swathing his head as masked men fired machine-gun volleys into the air and crowds called for revenge.
    Madhoun's life ended in Gaza's Jabaliya refugee camp on 1 November 2005 when the car he was travelling in with another Palestinian fighter was incinerated by a missile fired from an Israeli drone, its operators clearly aware of the identity of their target. Ten other people were wounded by the blast.
    Behind the killing, leaked documents from the Palestine papers reveal, lay extensive clandestine collaboration between the Israel's army and secret service and the Palestinian Authority (PA) – uneasy allies in a shadowy war against common enemies –which has grown still closer in the years since.
    Madhoun, 32, was a commander in the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement still loyal to the idea of armed struggle against Israel and refusing to accept the new Fatah and Palestinian Authority leadership's strategy of peaceful negotiations. Fawzi Abu al-Qarea, who died in the car with him, was a member of Fatah's bitter rival Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement.
    Handwritten notes in Arabic record Israel's defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, asking the PA interior minister, Nasser Yousef, to assassinate Madhoun.
    Madhoun's whereabouts were known to Israel and to Rashid Abu Shabak, a Fatah veteran and head of the PLO's Preventive Security Organisation in the Gaza Strip, which Israel was preparing to evacuate unilaterally that August.
    "We know his address ... Why don't you kill him?" Mofaz asked in a meeting in Tel Aviv earlier that summer.
    The defence minister alleged Madhoun was planning to attack one of the crossing points from Gaza into Israel. "He is not Hamas and you can kill him."
    Yousef, apparently reluctant, replied laconically that "instructions" had been given, but then complained: "The environment is not easy, our capabilities are limited, and you haven't offered anything."
    In the event, Madhoun died at the hands of Israeli forces in retaliation for a suicide bombing carried out by another Palestinian group, Islamic Jihad, which killed five Israelis in an open-air market in the northern town of Hadera on 26 October.
    Israeli officials told the media that Madhoun was behind an incident in which a Gazan woman was arrested with an explosives belt as she tried to cross into Israel. She allegedly confessed to having been ordered to blow herself up at the Beersheba hospital where she was being treated. Madhoun had also, according to the army, played a role in a suicide bombing that claimed 10 victims in Ashdod in 2004.
    "Israel had asked the PA several times to arrest him," Ha'aretz reported, "but in vain."
    There is no evidence that the PA played a direct role in Madhoun's death, but the Mofaz-Yousef meeting and documents from the Palestine papers and WikiLeaks give a revealing insight into the intimate intelligence and security co-operation between the two sides.
    Strikingly, the head of the Shin Bet security service reported after Madhoun's killing that his replacement as al-Aqsa leader was heavily influenced by Hamas.
    The PA, formally committed to fighting violence against Israel, condemned Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups which mounted attacks, but also condemned Israel when it took military action against them. Saeb Erekat, the PLO chief negotiator, compared the Jabaliya drone strike to "pouring fuel on a fire".
    The then foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, said of the "targeted assassination" policy: "It is not our goal to continue this activity. It can end immediately. It's all up to Abu Mazen [PA president, Mahmoud Abbas]. If Abu Mazen takes the strategic decision which he still refuses to take and acts against the infrastructure of terror ... [our activity] in Gaza will end the same day."
    Privately, Yuval Diskin, the Shin Bet chief, complained at the end of November 2005 that co-operation with his Palestinian counterparts against Hamas had been "useless" . "We have to do the most to help Fatah," he said.
    Nearly a year later, none of the main Palestinian security chiefs, including theveteran security strongman Mohammed Dahlan and Tawfiq Tirawi, head of general intelligence, were capable of providing leadership in Gaza and the West Bank, Israelis officials insisted. Diskin told the US security coordinator, Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, that Tirawi was "motivated, cruel and decisive, but has no standing in Gaza".
    He said Dahlan's Preventative Security Organisation was under pressure from Hamas. "If he sees personal benefit in helping President Abbas, he will do so, because when he wants to, he knows how to pull the strings in Gaza."
    Israel's approach was to urge the PA to arrest or kill wanted people but to act itself if it did not. In one meeting Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli defence official, named a suspect and said: "We gave the name to Dahlan and he refused to act. So we took him by force."
    PA leaders repeatedly assured both the Israelis and Americans in private that they were committed to fighting terrorism, especially after the Hamas takeover of Gaza in the summer of 2007.
    The shock of that defeat galvanised US-led efforts to overhaul the PA security apparatus. The aim was to simplify the chain of command to reduce the rivalries of competing agencies and improve performance.
    By 2008, Israeli leaders were much more confident about co-operation from PA security. "In the West Bank," Israel's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, remarked in March 2008, "the situation is more under control due to the fact that we are there ... and working together". Hazem Atallah, the PA police chief, boasted that newly trained National Security Force units had fired back when attacked in Qabatya, in the northern West Bank. "That is the way, they have to learn to respect the authority of the Palestinian security forces," he said. "I understand human rights, but this is not Switzerland." Amos Gilad responded: "I agree – freedom is not chaos."
    Israel's chief of staff, General Gabi Ashkenazi, was said to be "no longer sceptical about the utility of co-operation with the PA on security matters".
    In September 2009, Erekat, told a US official, David Hale: "We have had to kill Palestinians to establish one authority, one gun and the rule of law. We have even killed our own people to maintain order and the rule of law."
    Earlier that year, it had reported privately to George Mitchell the extent of its crackdown on Hamas and others in the West Bank: 3,700 "members of armed groups" had been arrested: 4,700 individuals had been "summoned for questioning" and more than 1,100 weapons had been confiscated.
 
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