Jerusalem, January 26: Palestinian Authority officials in the West Bank reacted angrily on Monday to the release of memos by al-Jazeera TV that revealed apparent concessions negotiators were willing to make to Israel in 2008. The discussions were kept confidential out of concern that media leaks of details from the talks would undermine the peace process.
Among the revelations contained in the documents, which the station’s Web site said number more than 1,600, were Palestinian negotiators’ willingness to concede sections of East Jerusalem to Israeli control as part of a final peace deal.
Minutes detailing the concession came from a meeting in Jerusalem in June 2008 between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators mediated by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Al-Jazeera’s English-language Web site is calling the documents the Palestine Papers, and is posting them incrementally, WikiLeaks-style, over the next several days.
Palestinian negotiators on Monday denied much of the report and directed their anger at al-Jazeera and the media outlet’s host country, Qatar, for allowing them to be released.
Palestinian negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo called the documents’ publication a “political campaign” by Qatar’s leadership against the Palestinian Authority.
Speaking at a hastily arranged press conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Abed Rabbo said the documents were forged “to serve al-Jazeera’s prior position,” which has often been hostile to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Roughly 50 demonstrators attacked al-Jazeera’s office in Ramallah, breaking a window and spraying graffiti on the entranceway that said “collaborator” and “al-Jazeera = Israel.”
Similar graffiti was drawn in Ramallah’s Al Manara Square, illustrating the seeming predominant Palestinian sentiment that the Palestine Papers, in highlighting Palestinian concessions to Israel, served Israeli interests.
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Israeli officials were largely quiet about the documents’ release. Israeli media commentators speculated that the documents could cause the Palestinians to harden their negotiating positions should U.S.-mediated talks, which have been deadlocked for months, resume.
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, who is featured prominently in the documents as one of those willing to surrender Palestinian control of parts of East Jerusalem, issued a statement late Monday saying many of the documents “misrepresented our positions” or took “statements and facts out of context.”
“Even though many ideas have been discussed by the two sides as part of the normal negotiations process, including some we could never agree to, we have consistently said any proposed agreement would have to gain popular support through a national referendum,” Erekat said.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said late Sunday, in a tweet, “The U.S. government is reviewing the alleged Palestinian documents released by Al-Jazeera. We cannot vouch for their veracity.”
Al-Jazeera did not say how it obtained the documents. Rather, it said Sunday on its Web site, “Over the last several months, Al Jazeera has been given unhindered access to the largest-ever leak of confidential documents related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
The documents, which the Web site says include memos, e-mails, maps, minutes from private meetings and accounts of high-level exchanges between 1999 and 2010, provide “an unprecedented look inside the continuing negotiations involving high-level American, Israeli, and Palestinian Authority officials,” al-Jazeera said. They appear to show Palestinian negotiators making greater concessions than had previously been known.
While books have been written detailing the failed U.S.-led peace efforts from 1999 onward, some of the more recent history, especially some of what was discussed in the last serious negotiation round between Abbas and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, remains unclear.
Among the other information the documents will reveal, al-Jazeera said, are compromises that Palestinian negotiators proposed on the right of return of Palestinian refugees to Israel, a key sticking point in the negotiations along with the future of Jerusalem, borders and security.
The documents will also detail the extensive cooperation between Abbas’s security services and the Israeli military, activity that both sides often try to keep secret, the television station said.
At the June 2008 meeting, the two sides engaged in a lengthy debate about land swaps – the concept that Israel would hold on to sections of the West Bank as part of a final peace deal and, in exchange, compensate the Palestinians territorially with parts of Israel.
Then-Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qurei, also known as Abu Ala, tells the group, “We proposed that Israel annexes all settlements in Jerusalem except Jabal Abu Ghneim (Har Homa),” according to “trilateral meeting minutes” published by al-Jazeera.
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“This is the first time in history that we make such a proposition; we refused to do so [at] Camp David,” he added, referring to the 2000 peace summit hosted by President Bill Clinton that collapsed without an agreement and was followed a few months later by a Palestinian uprising.
Qurei, then, however, listed several major Israeli settlements that the Palestinians would not allow Israel to annex, including Ma’aleh Adumim, a large settlement east of Jerusalem, and Ariel, to the north.
According to the minutes, the Israeli chief negotiator at the time, former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, insists that Israel needs to hold on to Ma’aleh Adumim and Ariel, and Erekat says she should instead focus on the fact that the Palestinians are conceding Jerusalem settlements including Ramat Shlomo, Gilo and French Hill.
It was Israeli construction in Ramat Shlomo that sparked a major row between the United States and Israel last March during a visit to Jerusalem by Vice President Biden. Israel insists that Ramat Shlomo, Gilo, French Hill and other areas are integral Israeli neighborhoods in Jerusalem and that it will continue to build in them.
Abbas has in recent months conditioned the resumption of peace negotiations on an Israeli freeze in construction in all of East Jerusalem, including these areas that Erekat said in 2008 the Palestinians would be willing to concede, according to the minutes.
–Agencies