The Palestine Papers reveal the extent to which the Obama administration orchestrated this 2009 handshake [EPA]Obama negotiating with Palestinians in Bad Faith ???
Palestinians upset over Obama's refusal to accept agreements made by Condoleeza Rice of which the Palestinians approved.
The Palestine Papers published at Al Jazeera reveal Obama more interested in gaining points in Public Relations and more interested in the "Optics" that is photo ops etc. than in real negotiations???
Palestinians make big concessions while Israel makes none. Israel wants all Arabs or Palestinians out of Israel so it can become a pure Jewish state. Otherwise they want total and absolute control over Palestinians in Gaza , the West Bank and occupied territories.
The US problem dealing with documents made public by wikileaks has gotten worse as Al Jazeera on its own publishes seceret documents pertaining to US/Palestinian/Israeli negotiations over the last ten years or so. Here is a sampling of the upshot of what these documents reveal about such negotiations. The Bush administration's negotiations in the capable hands of Condoleeza Rice at the very least set some preconditions of negotiations which the Palestinians could accept ie returning to the borders pre 1967 war- putting a halt to building new settlements or expanding older ones and that the right to return would be discussed.
We can only hope that other major news agencies will take on the same responsibility to make governments more accountable for their actions. It highlights how many of these powerful politicians diplomats, bureaucrats see it all as a game while battles rage and people are killed, injured, incarcerated or tortured.
Release of Palestine Papers by Al Jazeera undermines Israeli propaganda that the Palestinians refuse to negotiate in good faith . The documents reveal Israeis acting in "Bad Faith" while Obama is shown not that enthusiastic about an agreement unless it is mostly in Israel's favor.
Two decades of secret Israeli-Palestinian accords leaked to media worldwide Al-Jazeera TV begins leaking 1,600 secret documents: PA agreed to concede almost all of East Jerusalem to Israel, accept Israeli demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. By Jack Khoury and Haaretz Service Jan. 23, 2011
Al-Jazeera TV and The Guardian revealed Sunday the details of 1,600 confidential documents on negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians over the last two decades.
The documents leaked so far mostly reveal secret concessions offered by Palestinian negotiators on the issues of the right of return of Palestinian refugees, territorial concessions, and the recognition of Israel
and :
The Palestine papers: Al-Jazeera trumps WikiLeaks Palestinian documents on Mideast negotiations revealed by Al-Jazeera TV are testimony that the Palestinians are willing to go the distance for peace. By Akiva Eldar Haaretz.com ,Jan. 24, 2011
The leaked documents completely discredit the claim that there is "no peace partner" made by the leader of the newly formed Atzmaut faction, Ehud Barak, and his boss , Benjamin Netanyahu.
The documents are testimony that the Palestinians are willing to go the distance for peace: They will relinquish their claims on the Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas, the Etzion settlement bloc and the settlements along the Green Line. This would all be in return for territories on the western side of this line, including the region of Gilboa and Mount Hebron.
According to a map that was shown to me two weeks ago, the major territorial disputes remain over Ariel, Elkana, Ma’aleh Adumim and the Har Homa suburb of East Jerusalem (which was built after the 1993 Oslo Accords).
The documents in Al-Jazeera’s hands also confirm that the Palestinian leadership would be willing to abdicate sole autonomy in the Old City of Jerusalem and keep it under special rule.
The timing of the document leaks raises suspicions that the temporary Palestinian State border plan, submitted by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, was submitted as a pre-emptive strike against the Palestinian draft. A deeper look into the content of the documents reveals a significant gap between the Palestinian expectations, and the pittance that Lieberman has thrown at them in his proposal.
After reading the documents, calling Lieberman's drivel a "national plan" would be like calling the parliamentary investigation into left-wing organizations an initiative geared towards increasing transparency in NGOs in Israel.
The map that Lieberman has "offered" the Palestinians as an interim arrangement (45-50 percent of the West Bank with land swaps) cannot hold a candle to the map that Ehud Barak and former President Bill Clinton offered them (94-96 percent, plus passage between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank). Lieberman's map also falls far short of the map that Olmert presented Abbas (93.5 percent plus the passage between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank).
and from Aljazeera they have set up a section dealing with the issues pertinent to the documents with accessible PDF files of the Documents themselves in English.
The Palestine Papers show that Obama 's negotiations were more to do with public relations and "optics" than with substantive negotiations with both sides making concessions.
Obama negotiates in Bad Faith with the Palestinians and gives Israel what it wants while going back on agreements made earlier by the previous Bush administration.
The Obama Way: Window Dressing & PR not real negotiations
Obama wanted to avoid any of the core issues ie the right of return, Israel to stop building settlements and that the borders be returned to where they were pre- 1967 six day war UN resolutions. As far as the Palestinians were concerned Condoleeza Rice on behalf of the USA had agreed to begin talks based on agreeing to the pre-1967 borders.
The Obama Way -(Note : all videos from Al Jazeera online.)
The Palestine Papers : Deep frustrations with Obama Obama pressured PA negotiators to restart talks and refused to honour one of the Bush administration's key promises. Gregg Carlstrom Last Modified: 24 Jan 2011
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Jerusalem – It was all smiles in late September 2009, when Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, shook hands at the United Nations. Barack Obama, the US president, brought the men together for a trilateral meeting that he hailed as a chance to revive stalled talks between the two sides, an opportunity to "move forward".
In reality, there was little reason for optimism, and Obama knew it: Less than a week before the handshake, Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator of the Palestinian Authority (PA), told a senior Obama adviser that a trilateral meeting would be ruinous for the PA. "It’s like having a gun to my head, damned if you do and damned if you don’t," Erekat told David Hale.
Erekat also warned that Obama’s failure to secure a complete settlement freeze from the Israeli government would damage the credibility of the young administration, a suggestion Hale abruptly dismissed.
Hale: We cannot force a sovereign government. We can use persuasion and negotiations and shared interests.
Erekat: Of course you could if you wanted. How do you think this will reflect on the credibility of the US, if you can’t get this done?
Hale: We make the call on our own credibility.
Sixteen months later, though, Erekat’s concerns seem well-founded: talks have stalled, settlements continue to expand, and the optimism that Obama created with his campaign rhetoric and his Cairo speech has largely evaporated.
The Palestine Papers portray an Obama administration deeply concerned with the "optics" of the peace process. The White House leaned heavily on Palestinian negotiators to restart talks, without resolving any of the substantive concerns – particularly settlement growth – raised by the PA. And Obama refused to honour one of the Bush administration’s key promises to the Palestinians, a decision that Erekat said deeply hurt the PA’s credibility
Expelling Israel's Arab population? Israeli negotiators, including Tzipi Livni, proposed "swapping" some of Israel's Arab villages into a Palestinian state. Gregg Carlstrom Last Modified: 24 Jan 2011
Identity and Nationality- Israelis want to export as many Palestinians out of Israel as possible and to deny Palestinian refugees the " Right to Return" to create a pure Jewish State.
The Right of Return of Palestinian Refugees the Children of the Nakba who became refugees when Israel was founded and war broke out in 1948. Many Palestinians ran to escape the violence expecting as traditionally happened that once the fighting stopped the civilian non-combatants would return to their homes. Israel has always denied the Palestinian refugees the right to return.
The Palestine Papers: PA selling short the refugees
Palestinian Authority proposed that only a handful of the nearly six million Palestinian refugees be allowed to return.Laila Al-Arian 25 Jan 2011
They are known as the "Children of the Nakba" - a generation of Palestinians that witnessed, and survived, the forced expulsion and violence in 1948 committed by Zionist paramilitaries on behalf of the nascent state of Israel.
They each have a story about how they or their parents managed to escape their homeland over 60 years ago - and their wounds are still raw.
Some six million Palestinian refugees are scattered around the world, including more than 400,000 in Lebanon. Here, they are deprived of basic rights, not permitted to buy or sell property, and are banned from more than 70 job categories. Mired in abject poverty, they are dependent on an increasingly incapable United Nations agency for aid.
A "symbolic number" of returnees
The Palestine Papers show that Palestinian Authority (PA) negotiators were prepared to make major concessions on the refugees’ right of return: on the numbers potentially allowed to return to their homes in what is now Israel; on whether refugees would be able to vote on any peace agreement; and on how many would be able to settle in a future Palestinian state.
The Palestine Papers Main US negotiators Key American politicians featuring in The Palestine Papers Aljazeera.net, Jan 23, 2011
The Palestine Papers:PA stonewalled the Goldstone vote
PA, with US encouragement, delayed a UN vote on the Goldstone Report into war crimes committed during Israel's Gaza war.S. Farhan Mustafa Last Modified: 26 Jan 2011
On October 2, 2009, the UN Human Rights Council was widely expected to pass a resolution supporting the Goldstone Report, the UN’s probe of war crimes committed during Israel’s war in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009..
The Council instead agreed to delay a vote on the report until March 2010, following major reservations expressed by the Palestinian Authority, the United States and Israel.
A UNHRC endorsement of the report would have brought Israeli officials one step closer to prosecution before a war crimes tribunal, an event many Palestinians were anxious to see.
But, as The Palestine Papers reveal, the Palestinian Authority apparently sacrificed a potential victory for Palestinian victims in exchange for favorable assurances on negotiations from the United States and, they hoped, from Israel.
Palistinians willing participants or bamboozled by US negotiators into not taking steps to make Israel accountable for its War Crimes in the Gaza war
and so it goes,
GORD.
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