Document leak blows lid on death of Middle East peace process
Leak of confidential documents blow lid on Middle Eastconflict negotiations where Palestine’s increasingly far-reaching proposals were dismissed by Israelbecause they did not meet demands.
Described as the biggest leak of confidential documents in the history of the conflict, the documents reveal how Palestinian negotiators secretly agreed to accept Israel's annexation of all but one of the settlements built illegally in occupied East Jerusalem.
This unprecedented proposal was one of a string of concessions that will speculators say will cause shock waves among Palestinians and in the wider Arab world.
The thousand-page cache of confidential Palestinian records, spanning over a decade of negotiations with Israel and the US, was passed on to al-Jazeera TV, which shared it exclusively with the Guardian.
The documents – more of which will be published over the coming days – reveal
- The scale of confidential concessions Palestinian negotiators were willing to make, including on the highly sensitive issue of the right of return of Palestinian refugees.
- How Israeli leaders privately asked for some Arab citizens to be transferred to a new Palestinian state.
- The intimate level of covert co-operation between Israeli security forces and the Palestinian Authority.
- The central role of British intelligence in drawing up a secret plan to crush Hamas in the Palestinian territories.
- How Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders were privately tipped off about Israel's 2008-9 war in Gaza.
Many of the 1,600 leaked documents – drawn up by PA officials and lawyers working for the British-funded PLO negotiations support unit and include extensive verbatim transcripts of private meetings – have been independently authenticated and corroborated by former participants involved in the talks alongside intelligence and diplomatic sources.
May 2008’s concession by Palestinian leaders to allow Israel to annex the settlements in East Jerusalem has never been made public.
All settlements built on territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war are illegal under international law, but the Jerusalem homes are routinely described, and perceived, by Israel as municipal "neighbourhoods". Israeli governments have consistently sought to annex the largest settlements as part of a peace deal.
But Erekat told Israeli leaders in 2008: "This is the first time in Palestinian-Israeli history in which such a suggestion is officially made." No such concession had been made at Camp David talks in 2000 - where Yasser Arafat refused to concede sovereignty around the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques.
But the offer was rejected unconditionally by Israel because it did not include a big settlement near the city Ma'ale Adumim as well as Har Homa and several others deeper in the West Bank, including Ariel. "We do not like this suggestion because it does not meet our demands," Israel's then foreign minister, Tzipi Livni has replied, "and probably it was not easy for you to think about it, but I really appreciate it".
Reacting to the damming document leak, Palestinian chief of the PLO Steering and Monitoring Committee Saeb Erekat said the minutes of the meetings were "a bunch of lies and half truths". Former Palestinian prime Ahmed Ali Mohammed Qurei also went on record saying that "many parts of the documents were fabricated, as part of the incitement against the … Palestinian leadership".
However Palestinian former negotiator, Diana Buttu, is calling on Erekat to resign following the revelations. "Saeb must step down and if he doesn't it will only serve to show just how out of touch and unrepresentative the negotiators are," she said.