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<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/palestine-papers">
<img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/01/21/Palestine-papers_620_120.jpg" width=620 height=120 alt="The Palestine papers">
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/palestine-papers"><h1><b>
<br><br>
<br>
</a><font size=4>Secret papers reveal slow death of Middle East peace
process</b></font></h1><font size=3>• Massive new leak lifts lid on
negotiations <br>
• PLO offered up key settlements in East Jerusalem<br>
• Concessions made on refugees and Holy sites<br><br>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/palestinians-israel-biggest-jerusalem-history">
• Israel spurned offer of 'biggest Jerusalem in history'</a><br>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/palestine-papers-power-weakness-negotiations">
• Palestinian leaders weak – and increasingly desperate</a><br>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/story-behind-leaked-palestine-papers">
• The story behind the Palestine papers</a><br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/seumasmilne">Seumas Milne</a>
and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/ianblack">Ian Black</a>,
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middleeast">Middle East</a>
editor <br>
Sunday 23 January 2011 20.08 GMT <br>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/palestine-papers-expose-peace-concession" eudora="autourl">
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/palestine-papers-expose-peace-concession<br>
<br>
<br>
</a>The
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/palestine-papers">biggest leak
of confidential documents in the history of the Middle East conflict</a>
has revealed that Palestinian negotiators secretly agreed to accept
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/israel">Israel</a>'s annexation
of
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/east-jerusalem-land-palestine-papers">
all but one of the settlements built illegally in occupied East
Jerusalem</a>. This unprecedented proposal was one of a string of
concessions that will cause shockwaves among Palestinians and in the
wider Arab world.<br><br>
A cache of thousands of pages of confidential Palestinian records
covering more than a decade of negotiations with Israel and the US has
been <a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/">obtained by
al-Jazeera TV</a> and shared
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/story-behind-leaked-palestine-papers">
exclusively with the Guardian</a>. The papers provide an extraordinary
and vivid insight into the disintegration of
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/timeline-middle-east-peace-talks">
the 20-year peace process</a>, which is now regarded as all but
dead.<br><br>
The documents – many of which will be published by the Guardian over the
coming days – also reveal:<br><br>
• The scale of
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/palestine-papers-power-weakness-negotiations">
confidential concessions offered by Palestinian negotiators</a>,
including on the highly sensitive issue of the right of return of
Palestinian refugees.<br><br>
• How Israeli leaders privately asked for some Arab citizens to be
transferred to a new Palestinian state.<br><br>
• The intimate level of covert co-operation between Israeli security
forces and the Palestinian Authority.<br><br>
• The central role of British intelligence in drawing up a secret plan to
crush Hamas in the
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/palestinian-territories">
Palestinian territories</a>.<br><br>
• How Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders were privately tipped off about
Israel's 2008-9 war in Gaza.<br><br>
As well as the
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/palestinians-israel-biggest-jerusalem-history">
annexation of all East Jerusalem settlements except Har Homa</a>,
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/palestine-papers">the Palestine
papers</a> show PLO leaders privately suggested swapping part of the
flashpoint East Jerusalem Arab neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah for land
elsewhere.<br><br>
Most controversially, they also proposed a joint committee to take over
the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount holy sites in Jerusalem's Old City – the
neuralgic issue that helped sink the Camp David talks in 2000 after
Yasser Arafat refused to concede sovereignty around the Dome of the Rock
and al-Aqsa mosques.<br><br>
The offers were made in 2008-9, in the wake of George Bush's Annapolis
conference, and were privately hailed by the chief Palestinian
negotiator,
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/palestine-papers-saeb-erekat-palestinian">
Saeb Erekat, as giving Israel "the biggest
</a><i>Yerushalayim</i>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/palestine-papers-saeb-erekat-palestinian">
[the Hebrew name for Jerusalem] in history"</a> in order to resolve
the world's most intractable conflict. Israeli leaders, backed by the US
government, said the offers were inadequate.<br><br>
Intensive efforts to revive talks by the Obama administration foundered
last year over Israel's refusal to extend a 10-month partial freeze on
settlement construction. Prospects are now uncertain amid increasing
speculation that a negotiated two-state solution to the conflict is no
longer attainable – and fears of a new war.<br><br>
Many of the
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/palestine-papers-editors-note">
1,600 leaked documents</a> – 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 by the Guardian and corroborated by former
participants in the talks and intelligence and diplomatic sources. The
Guardian's coverage is
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/135224">
supplemented by WikiLeaks cables</a>, emanating from the
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/us-embassy-cables-the-documents">
US consulate in Jerusalem and embassy in Tel Aviv</a>. Israeli officials
also kept their own records of the talks, which may differ from the
confidential Palestinian accounts.<br><br>
The concession in May 2008 by Palestinian leaders to allow Israel to
annex the settlements in East Jerusalem – including Gilo, a focus of
controversy after Israel gave the go-ahead for 1,400 new homes – has
never been made public.<br><br>
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 – and came close
to doing so at Camp David.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
But the offer was rejected out of hand 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,
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/palestine-papers-tzipi-livni-israel">
Tzipi Livni</a>, told the Palestinians, "and probably it was not
easy for you to think about it, but I really appreciate
it".<br><br>
The overall impression that emerges from the documents, which stretch
from 1999 to 2010, is of the weakness and growing desperation of PA
leaders as failure to reach agreement or even halt all settlement
temporarily undermines their credibility in relation to their Hamas
rivals; the papers also reveal the unyielding confidence of Israeli
negotiators and the often dismissive attitude of US politicians towards
Palestinian representatives.<br><br>
Last night Erekat said the minutes of the meetings were "a bunch of
lies and half truths". Qureia told AP that "many parts of the
documents were fabricated, as part of the incitement against the …
Palestinian leadership".<br><br>
However Palestinian former negotiator, Diana Buttu, called 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.<br><br>
Palestinian and Israeli officials both point out that any position in
negotiations is subject to the principle that "nothing is agreed
until everything is agreed" and therefore is invalid without an
overarching deal.<br><br>
<br><br>
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