The explosive nature of thousands of pages of confidential notes on talks between Palestinians and Israelis over the past decade obtained by Al Jazeera Arabic channel, and shared with Guardian newspaper, will have major consequences for the two sides and the United States. Sunday’s revelations will further reduce the credibility of Palestinian Authority leaders on the Arab street and highlight the hypocrisy of Israelis’ constant refrain that they have no credible partners to negotiate with. Besides, the partisan nature of American mediation, clear enough to the congnoscenti, has been laid mercilessly bare. The revelations will at the same time enhance the prestige of Hamas ruling the Gaza Strip.
Despite the denials of the chief Palestinian negotiators, Ahmed Qurei and Saeb Erekat, Guardian says it has independently verified the revelations and at least one Palestinian negotiator, Diana Buttu, has asked Mr Erekat to resign. The Palestinian concessions are mind-boggling. They include the signing away of most of occupied East Jerusalem, an international committee to oversee the administration of the holy Al Aqsa mosque and Temple Mount and restricting the return of Palestinian refugees to 10,000 over 10 years. Even these concessions — equivalent to selling the family silver — did not satisfy Israelis and Americans, who wanted more.
So revealing is the tenor of the negotiations, with Palestinians in the role of supplicants, Israelis barely concealing their contempt and Americans acting as Israeli proxies, that the Palestinian Authority and its leader Mahmoud Abbas can hardly survive the expose. Even before this bombshell, their constituents held the perambulating Palestinian peace negotiators in lounge suits in little respect. Now with their closed-door discussions in the open, their credibility will be zero.
The closest the two sides came to an agreement was in 2008, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was too weak with differences remaining between Israelis wanting to retain six per cent of the West Bank while Palestinians were willing to give two per cent for land swaps. Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded Mr Olmert and refused to pick up the threads. His agenda was not a two-state solution but a Greater Israel.
So disruptive of peace the revelations are likely to be that a former US official of the Clinton administration has suggested that Palestinians might have leaked the documents to pressure the United States on the eve of a proposed UN Security Council declaration affirming an obvious truth, that the settlements are illegal and should be frozen. The US invariably vetoes any resolution viewed by Tel Aviv as harmful to its interests. Always secure in total American support, Israel will brazen out any embarrassment it faces.
For the United States and the wider world, the embarrassing revelations could not have come at a more difficult time. The spontaneous revolt of Tunisians against their long-time ruler leading to his hurried departure and promise of a more democratic regime has set the Arab world stirring, with demonstrations and killings in other countries. The simmering revolt in Arab societies, most under autocratic rule, could only be fanned by revelations that Palestinian leaders were grovelling to Israelis and Americans in private, crossing all the red lines they had always promised to uphold, and rejected in the end because they were not servile enough.
Indeed, Al Jazeera has added a new dimension to the unrest in the Arab world activated by the Tunisian revolt.
Outside the Gulf monarchies, whose oil and gas wealth and small populations have a different compact between the rulers and ruled, there are few icons Arabs can look up to. The pattern of autocratic rulers gives the people little scope for self-expression and with a large young population denied political freedom and often unemployed are a combustible mix which can prove dangerous, as Tunisia demonstrated so dramatically. Now, even the leaders fighting for their country’s freedom have proved to be men of straw.
Every Arab country, apart from the non-Arab world, pays lip service to the Palestinian cause. But it is an open secret that each nation’s approach is guided by self-interest.
The United States, Israel’s rich uncle and protector, is also the protector of and aid-giver to many major Arab countries, and fellow-feeling for Palestinian cousins takes second place to being on the right side of Washington and computing on how to outwit Iran.
Unsurprisingly, Palestinian Fatah negotiators’ pusillanimity and concessions make the rival Hamas shine more. Hamas starts from the premise that it is pointless to negotiate with Israelis from a position of weakness and the most they are willing to offer is a time-barred peace. It is Israel’s, and Washington’s, purpose to fold Hamas into the “war on terror”, but to Arabs fighting for the liberation of Palestine and for a freer and more prosperous society, the continuing subjugation of their land and their lives can only lead to frustrated violence.
The prairie fire lit by Tunisia is spreading in the region at a somewhat faster pace than anticipated. Countries vary; the scale of suppression of freedoms varies, as are their historical experiences.
But sometimes in history the time is ripe for a new thrust for thinking the unthinkable and years and generations of humiliation culminate in seeking a change. If even veterans of the Palestinian struggle, including the aide of the redoubtable Yasser Arafat, can bend to the power and blandishments of the usurper, where is Arab self-respect?
These are the questions troubling the Arab mind. The answer is not to fold Arab dissent into terrorism, but to begin to address the real problems confronting the region. The United States and the West can start with giving Palestinians freedom, instead of doing everything to perpetuate an injustice that makes nonsense of their pious declarations on justice and freedom.