Palestine papers provoke anger

Palestine papers provoke anger on streets of West Bank and Gaza

Protesters try to storm al-Jazeera studios in Ramallah, while in Gaza City anger is focused on Palestinian negotiators

Harriet Sherwood in Ramallah
guardian.co.uk, Monday 24 January 2011 19.27 GMT

The chunky young man in Ramallah's al-Manara Square knew exactly where his anger was directed today – and it wasn't at the Palestinian negotiating team for the generous concessions it had offered to Israel.

Jutting his head towards a tall office block which houses the most popular television station in the West Bank, and giving his name as Jimi, he said: "These are false allegations. Al-Jazeera should be destroyed."

Not long afterwards, about 50 protesters made a limited attempt to do just that by smashing windows and security cameras and attempting to gain entry to the seventh-floor TV studios. They were swiftly stopped by the Palestinian Authority's ubiquitous security men.

Outside, others – instructed to protest by Fatah, the party that dominates the PA – were busy with marker pens and spray paint. "Al-Jazeera = Israel" in bright blue paint decorated the pavement; signs saying "Al-Jazeera are collaborators" and "Al-Jazeera sponsors Arab division" hung on railings.

Some of those in and around Manara Square said they were afraid to speak to the press. But Naser al-Alaydi, 63, dressed in a smart suit and with a neat goatee, was willing to be frank. Describing himself as a moderate independent, he said the disclosures in the Palestine papers were "very painful for us". "We made concessions already, and we will never do more than that. What's really important for us is Jerusalem – not just for Palestinians but for the whole Arab world."

In Gaza, anger was focused on the Ramallah-based negotiators. "I couldn't believe my eyes when I watched it. This is cheating to Palestinian people," said Maher Mohammad, 50, a tailor in Gaza City. "Jerusalem is a holy land, nobody can make concessions regarding it, because it's not for Palestinians only but for all Muslims."

Ayman Dwima, 38, wanted more transparency. "The PA is required to be more honest, first with itself, then with Palestinian people, and not to hide anything. The PA is playing alone. It has to make unity with Hamas, because it represents at least half of the population, and this will give the strength to the Palestinian negotiator."

But whatever the views on the street, the key players were sticking to their line. Some of the reports "misrepresented our positions"; others were "patently false", Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian chief negotiator, said in a statement. "Any accurate representation of our positions will show that we have consistently stood by our people's basic rights and international legal principles.

"Indeed, 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, including those set out in UNGA 194."

The news stories were "a distortion of the truth", "a propaganda game … to brainwash Palestinian citizens", said Yasser Abed Rabbo, speaking on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organisation at a press conference in Ramallah.

Speaking to journalists in Cairo, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said the public had been misled by the reports. "We say very clearly, we do not have secrets."

A senior Hamas official, Salah Bardaweel, told the Guardian that the Islamist organisation was studying the leaked documents before announcing its "final position". But, he added, "the problem now is not between Hamas and Fatah, it's between the Palestinian people and the Palestinian negotiators."

On the other side of the negotiating table, the Israelis were largely keeping quiet today, perhaps so as not to distract from the Palestinians' discomfort in the media spotlight.

But Avigdor Lieberman, the hardline foreign minister, offered a region-wide perspective on the disclosures. "The central problem of the Middle East is not settlements, but rather the extreme Muslim radicals that threaten regional stability," he said during a visit to London. "The recent events in Tunisia, Algeria, Lebanon and Iraq are not connected to the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. The true threat to the Palestinian Authority's leadership is not Israel, but Hamas and jihad."

Additional reporting by Hazem Balousha in Gaza City

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/24/palestine-papers-anger-reaction?

What they said

Tzipi Livni, former Israeli foreign minister
Today it is … clear that the process did not fail and was not exhausted. It did not end, but was not allowed to ripen until an agreement was reached because of elections in Israel and this government's choice not to continue the negotiations. I was discreet throughout the negotiations over the course of many months, in order to increase the chances of an agreement, even at a personal political cost … A peace agreement that will end the conflict and protect the national and security interests of Israel is possible.

Saeb Erekat, chief PLO negotiator
In the past few hours, 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

Akiva Eldar, Haaretz
The documents revealed by al-Jazeera are much more important than the documents recently released by WikiLeaks. The former document the talks that took place in 2008 between the head of the Palestinian negotiating team and then foreign minister Tzipi Livni, as well as with American officials, which is not just a chapter in history.

Tony Karon, Time magazine
The problem facing Abbas and Erekat as they try to discredit the documents being rolled out in the coming week is that the peace process in which they have invested all their political capital is itself so palpably moribund as to corrode their credibility.

What it shows is how Abbas and PLO have sold out the Palestinian people year after year and that once again Hamas is the true voice of the people.

Only when they are prepared to set down their arms and prepare to join the negotiating table. If the IRA can do it, then so can Hamas.

cable2 wrote:What it shows is how Abbas and PLO have sold out the Palestinian people year after year and that once again Hamas is the true voice of the people.

Jody McIntyre

* By Jody McIntyre
* Notebook
* Tuesday, 25 January 2011 at 11:33 am

I turned on Al Jazeera on Sunday to see a live interview with Maher Hanoun. In 2009, I was living with Maher’s family in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah when they were evicted from their home.

It was 5:15am on Sunday 2nd August, when I woke up to the sound of the Hanoun family’s front room windows being smashed in. I had just laid down to rest 20 minutes earlier.

We had known that the threat of eviction was imminent ever since the first order of this year was served on 19 February of that year. The family had already been kicked out of their home once, in 2002, but it was still hard to imagine that the day would ever come.

By the time I’d got to my feet, scores of soldiers were rushing into the house and had surrounded me. Due to my disability I cannot walk at a fast pace, which they used as an excuse to increase their level of aggression, kicking me as I fell to the ground and pushing me out the front door. As I tumbled down the stairs outside, I pointed at my wheelchair:

“That’s my wheelchair,” I said. “I need it because I can’t walk.”

“No! No!” the armed Israeli forces replied, continuing to shove me away.

It was only a couple of hours before a van of Jewish settlers drove up and began moving in to the Hanoun family’s house. We slept the night on the pavement opposite the home.

The next day, Maher spoke to reporters who had gathered by the olive tree we sat under for shade in the day, and slept under for shelter at night:

“We have been made refugees again,” he told the reporters. “This is a slow genocide they are conducting against the Palestinians of East Jerusalem.”

At the time, the local representative of the Palestinian Authority was prompt in delivering a verbal condemnation of the eviction of the Hanoun family. But we now know, thanks to ‘The Palestine Papers’ leaked to Al Jazeera, that their words were nothing but a facade, and that the PA had already offered Sheikh Jarrah, along with most of the rest of East Jerusalem, to the Israeli government a year and a half previously.

As he was interviewed on Al Jazeera, Maher spoke with the same courage as he had during the time I spent living with his family that summer:

“Jerusalem must be first,” Maher asserted, “all of Jerusalem. I do not see how there can be a Palestinian state without it. If this is the case, negotiations must be stopped immediately.”

I suspect that his words will speak for many Palestinians in the coming weeks. For the so-called “Palestinian Authority”, I cannot see these papers as anything but the final straw.

What the PA have now put beyond doubt is that they do not care for people like Maher and his family. They do not care for Palestinian families who have lived in Jerusalem for generations. When Saeb Erekat tells US state department officials that he wants only “a symbolic number of refugees” to return, he shows that he does not care for the masses of Palestinians living in camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, and the millions more scattered across the world.

Mr. Erekat went on Al Jazeera to defend himself, but his argument was pathetic, at best:

“Is it not strange that we would accept all these concessions that Israel is asking for and there is still no peace deal?”

Yes, Mr. Erekat, that is exactly what we think. We think that the PA have offered concessions of epic proportions, concessions that sell out the most basic rights of their people, with nothing offered in return, and that Israel have still rejected your offers. In fact, Mr. Erekat, we have thought it for a long time, but it is now documented fact.

Mahmoud Abbas, the disputed President of the Palestinian Authority, expressed his “shock” at the release of The Palestine Papers. I think Mr. Abbas has a lot more shocks to come in the next few days. Perhaps the Saudis should keep a room free for him and Erekat; I’m sure they’d be happy to stay with the recently deposed Tunisian President Ben Ali.

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/01/25/the-price-of-jerusalem/

The_Amber_Spyglass wrote:Only when they are prepared to set down their arms and prepare to join the negotiating table. If the IRA can do it, then so can Hamas.

If I am not mistaken.. it was only after Mo got the Protestant and Catholics to accept the legal right's of the other, did the different groups even sit in the same room.

And that’s some thing neither Palestinians nor Israelis can accept.. How or why should the Palestinians accept the legally questionable imposed state of Israel, when the Israelis have used those imposed boarders as a starting point to steal vast amounts of lands outside those 1949 boarders.. How or who should the Israelis accept the right’s of a people who do question the legality of an imposed state.

If no other point has come out of the licked papers, then Abbas and the PLO do not nor never have spoken for the Palestinian people, then it has been worth while.

cable2 wrote:And that’s some thing neither Palestinians nor Israelis can accept..

Of course not, "God" gave the land exclusively to them as His own special exclusively chosen people... or so each side believes.

cable2 wrote:How or why should the Palestinians accept the legally questionable imposed state of Israel,

Nevertheless the deed is done and cannot be undone. What are we supposed to do, send all the Jews to settle another country elsewhere?

cable2 wrote:when the Israelis have used those imposed boarders as a starting point to steal vast amounts of lands outside those 1949 boarders..

Perhaps when Hezbollah claims a ceasefire is on, it actually ceases shelling civilian settlements from Syria, perhaps the Israeli military will stop being so trigger happy.

Neither side is completely innocent and until they stop this childish game of "they started it", we are going to get nowhere.

cable2 wrote:How or why should the Palestinians accept the legally questionable imposed state of Israel

Once again: Cite the specific law. If you can't, don't make the claim.

cable2 wrote:How or who should the Israelis accept the right’s of a people who do question the legality of an imposed state.

All states are "imposed."