"Palestinian Papers" January 2011

Summary: In January 2011 the Arabic-language news organization Al Jazeera made public a collection of what it described as almost 1,7000 secret documents relating to about a decade of Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations up to January 2010. The documents included memos, emails, accounts of meetings, and strategy papers, among other things. The source of the leaked documents, from the Palestinian Authority, was not disclosed. Analyses of the documents published by Al Jazeera and The Guardian newspaper of Britain, among others, painted a picture of the Palestinian Authority granting concession after concession, particularly regarding parts of the city of Jerusalem, without receiving any concessions in return. Analysts said this could be interpreted either as Israeli intransigence, or as a Palestinian negotiating team that was too eager to make concessions in exchange for nothing.

What. The "Palestinian Papers" are a collection of nearly 1,700 previously secret documents said by the Al Jazeera Arab television network to relate to secret Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations. They were made public by Al Jazeera in January 2011. The collection included "memos, e-mails, maps, minutes from private meetings, accounts of high level exchanges, strategy papers and even power point presentations" related to Palestinian-Israeli talks over a 10-year period (1999-2010), according to Al Jazeera. In making the documents public, Al Jazeera did not say whether it had released all related documents in its possession from the time-frame, or whether it thought it possessed all relevant documents generated during the decade of negotiations covered by the leaked documents. Al Jazeera declared that the collection represented "the largest-ever leak of confidential documents related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." The network said it would not reveal the source of the documents, but said that "we have taken great care over an extended period of time to assure ourselves of their authenticity." Al Jazeera said that the leaked documents were the initial output of its new "Al Jazeera Transparency Unit," which it likened to the Wikileaks organization and to be a means by which would-be leakers could make secret documents available to the public -- after verification by Al Jazeera, the organization said.

Palestinian Authority leaders denied the legitimacy of the "leaked" documents and called them fake.

Who: The main characters taking part in negotiations covered by the leaked documents included:

• Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority since 2005.
• Saeb Erekat, a lead negotiator for the Palestinian Authority featured prominently in the collection.
• Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister (2006-2008) during part of the period covered by the documents, who insisted independently that he had come close to reaching a permanent peace agreement with the Palestinians.
• Tzipi Livni, a former Israeli foreign minister (2006-2008), later prime minister (Oct. 2008-Feb. 2009), who negotiated for Israel during part of the period covered by the leaked documents.

Substance. Among the details of Palestinian-Israel negotiations contained in the leaked documents were:

• Jerusalem. According to Al Jazeera, Palestinian negotiators agreed in 2008, to allow Israel to incorporate a large settlement of Orthodox Jews located in a part of Jerusalem claimed by Palestinians without anything in return.
• Territory. The documents included two "napkin maps" submitted by Palestinian President Abbas to Israeli President Olmert in mid-2008 that showed Palestinian negotiators having conceded virtually all -- but not 100% -- of the territory occupied by Jewish settlements on former Jordanian territory on the West Bank of the Jordan River; in response Israel demanded even more territory, including several large Jewish settlements, in exchange for "sparsely-populated farmland along the Gaza Strip and the West Bank."
• Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat "was willing to cede control over the Haram al-Sharif, or Temple Mount, to the oversight of an international committee during discussions about East Jerusalem," according to a version reported by New York magazine (January 24, 2011). According to the papers, Erekat was willing to concede what he described as "the biggest Yerushalayim in Jewish history" -- using the Hebrew word for the city claimed by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority as their legitimate capital.
• Erekat told Livni, then foreign minister, that "I would vote for you" in forthcoming elections. According to a version of the papers published by The Guardian of Britain in January 2011, "Livni in particular -- now leader of the Israeli opposition -- will be heartened that no words are recorded here to suggest she was ever a soft touch."
• Palestinian negotiators agreed in 2008 to an expansion of the Israeli settlement, mostly of Orthodox Jews, of Ramat Shlomo. In 2010 U.S. Vice President Joe Biden specifically mentioned expansion of this settlement as an example of a development that "undermines the kind of trust we need" to advance peace talks.
• Palestinians refused to concede some Jewish settlements deep inside the West Bank, such as Ma'ale Adumim, Ariel, Giv'at Ze'ev, and Ephrat, but said the settlements could remain -- as part of a future Palestinian state. Livni said this proposal was not realistic and refused to discuss it.
• The area of Jerusalem known to Palestinians as Haram al-Sharif ("Noble Sanctuary"), home of the Al Aqsa mosque, and to Jews as Temple Mount, emerged as a sticking point that neither side was willing to concede -- largely because it holds religious significance for both Muslims and Jews. According to Al Jazeera, "the status of the Haram al-Sharif was also seldom raised in more than 280 bilateral meetings during the Annapolis process (November 2007-December 2008)" On the topic of Islam's third-holiest site, Palestinian negotiator Erekat was quoted as saying, during a meeting on October 21, 2009, that a "creative" solution was needed, suggesting possibly "having a body or a committee, having undertakings, for example not to dig [under the foundations of Al Aqsa mosque]. The only thing I cannot do is convert to Zionism."

Context. The "Palestinian Papers" were released by Al Jazeera about three months after a much larger set of around 40,000 secret American diplomatic documents, on a broad range of subjects, was released by another organization, Wikileaks, in October 2010. It was among the first such wholesale releases of secret documents in a prolonged peace negotiating process during which one cardinal rule has been to keep details secret until all details are worked out. Without this, analysts have said, individual concessions made by either side could be picked apart outside the context of an overall peace agreement.

The thrust of the Al Jazeera documents was to portray the Palestinian side as having given a string of concessions on territory without extracting any concessions from Israel in return. The leaks thus could have been intended to make PA President Abbas appear weak vis a vis Israel, an aim that might coincide with those of his Palestinian political enemies, notably the hard-line Hamas organization in Gaza. On the other hand, the narrative of the negotiations in the leaked documents also painted the Israeli side as intransigent -- as having received one concession after another and still not willing to give up anything in return.