Wailing over the Palestine Papers (Benny Morris)

[shira]

Whatever happened to the image of the hardboiled, cynical journalist, who believes no one and questions everything?

He may still exist, but not when it comes to the Palestinians. Take Jonathan Freedland, the usually sharp Guardian columnist. He did grudgingly concede that the trove of 1600-odd documents on the past decade's Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations just published by the Arab Al Jazeera network and his own newspaper "may have been leaked selectively." But he then dove in, recklessly and breathlessly, as one who has just found solid gold bricks. The scoop of the century! Here was, he wrote, "proof" of "how far the Palestinians were willing to go" to make peace with Israel—and, once again, how "intransigent" the Israelis were, in private and publicly. Here was the key to understanding the absence of Israeli-Palestinian peace.

In addition to casting aside all skepticism, Freedland also displayed a very short memory (this, let it be quickly admitted, is not uniquely Freedland: It is a common journalistic shortcoming). Had he exercised memory, or looked, indeed, at his newspaper's own archive, he might have discovered that the astonishing Palestinian "concessions"—mainly, that the bulk of the new Israeli neighborhoods in north, east, and south Jerusalem, built on or across the 1967 lines, were already "conceded" to the Israelis in the Clinton "parameters"—President Bill Clinton's peace proposals—of December 2000, which the Palestinians to this day maintain were substantially accepted by the previous Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. Clinton had laid down the principle, in dividing Jerusalem, of Jewish neighborhoods to go to Israel and Arab areas to come under Arab sovereignty.

<snip>

Let Wikileaks or Al Jazeera (or Freedland) find and publish the document showing that the Palestinian leadership has accepted the Clinton formula for solving the refugeee problem—i.e., settlement in place, in the Arab countries, in the future West Bank-Gaza Palestinian state, across the oceans in Canada, or wherever—and conveyed that acceptance to Israel, formally, officially and definitively, as well as the agreement for recognizing Israel as the Jewish state, and peace between Israel and the Palestinians would be achievable in short order.

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-wailing-over-the-palestine-papers-4766

[Ken Burch]

1. This from Benny "We Were RIGHT to deport all 800,000 of them" Morris

It's disgusting that you are STILL insisting that the Palestinians hadn't done enough.

Why are you SO invested in preserving the discredited "no partner for peace" meme?

You know perfectly well that Israel doesn't have any real right to demand that most of the settlements stay in place in exchange for peace, and you know that keeping the West Bank settlements in place would have to make the creation of a viable Palestinian state impossible.

[shira]

2. Can't find fault with anything in the article, Ken? n/t

[Ken Burch]

3. I can find nothing BUT fault with the article

All Morris is doing is regurgitating the Likudnik "no partner for peace" line. Even though the papers prove there WAS a partner.

Why is it SO important to you to CONTINUE to pretend that the Palestinian side is totally intransigent?

[shira]

4. My reasoning is based on the fact the PA is doing nothing to prepare Palestinians for compromise.

They've only done the exact opposite, inciting hate and terror and then celebrating and rewarding it while sounding uncompromising and intransigent.

Negotiations are not official locked-in positions. I also suspect the PA's negotiators can agree to virtually anything they want but it's Abbas' final say as to whether the package deal is accepted. It's all or nothing.

[Ken Burch]

5. They have to be very tough in proposing compromises, because the Israeli government side

will never STOP demanding that Palestinians give things up. Bibi still hasn't given up on preventing the creation of a Palestinian state, even though everyone(including YOU)would have to admit that nothing short of an actual Palestinian state could give the Palestinian people anything to live for. They obviously can't have any hope while their land remains under military occupation and keeps getting chipped away by the settlements.

And it's crucial that the PA NOT EVER be seen, by the Palestinian rank-and-file, as having "lost" to Israel. Either Bibi doesn't get that, or he wants the Palestinian side to make a deal that will destroy their credibility, leading to that Palestinian leadership being replaced by a tougher faction, thus giving Bibi a reason to maintain the Occupation and continue stealing land for the settlements. You should be willing to see by now, shira, that the Israeli leadership can't be trusted to be any less cynical or opportunistic than any other country's leadership. Clearly, at this state Bibi and Barak no longer care how many people die in the name of keeping themselves in power-and Bibi's still pointlessly obsessed with avenging his brother(who was killed by the UGANDANS, not the Palestinians, but Bibi doesn't care about that distinction).

And as for compromise, it should be compromise enough for the Palestinians to accept Israel's existence and live in peace with Israel as confined to the 1967 boundaries. If Israel gets that, what more do they have any right to ask for? It's clearly immoral for the Israeli government to insist on making the Palestinian state as small as possible and making that state economically and militarily subordinate TO Israel.