Negotiating In Bad Faith

Looks like the hammer is dropping on leaked documents again, this time involving Bush-era negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians.  WikiLeaks isn't being mentioned, but Al-Jazeera suddenly has a whole raft of documents showing the Palestinian Authority was willing to give up nearly all of Jerusalem, and that Israel wouldn't even discuss the plan.

"These documents could discredit among Palestinians the very notion of negotiation with Israel and the two-state solution that underpins it," Jonathan Freedland wrote in a comment piece at the Guardian.

What's more, the documents blow apart what has been a staple of Israeli public diplomacy: the claim that there is no Palestinian partner. That theme, a refrain of Israeli spokesmen on and off for years, is undone by transcripts which show that there is not only a Palestinian partner but one more accommodating than will surely ever appear again....

Freedland and others suggested that the revelations could undermine Fatah, the ruling Palestinian faction, to the benefit of Hamas and other more radical groups, particularly if Fatah is seen to be acting in Israel's interests rather than Palestinians'. The Guardian's Seumas Milne reports that Palestinian negotiators come off as "weak and increasingly desperate" in the leaked documents.

And there is plenty in what al-Jazeera and the Guardian are calling "The Palestine Papers" to suggest this could easily become a widely-held perception among Palestinians. At a meeting shortly before the Jerusalem offer, Qureia told Livni, "I would vote for you."

"Many on the Palestinian streets will recoil to read not just the concessions offered by their representatives – starting with the yielding of those parts of East Jerusalem settled by Israeli Jews – but the language in which those concessions were made," Freedland wrote. "To hear their chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, tell the Israelis that the Palestinians are ready to concede 'the biggest Yerushalayim in Jewish history' – even using the Hebrew word for the city – will strike many as an act of humiliation."

Indeed, if there was any hope left for negotiations to restart now, they have been all but destroyed by this leak.  The Palestinian Authority is furious.

A senior Palestinian Authority official in Ramallah on Sunday strongly condemned the Al-Jazeera TV network for publishing hundreds of documents concerning the peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis.

"Al-Jazeera has declared war on the Palestinians," the official told The Jerusalem Post. "This station serves the interests of the enemies of the Palestinians."

Asked if the PA was now considering measures against Al-Jazeera, the official said he did not see how a TV station that "incites" against the Palestinians would be able to continue operating in the West Bank. However, he said that PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who is currently in Cairo, would decided on the PA's response to the exposure of the documents in the coming hours.

And Israel's stone cold rejection of the Palestinian offer shows just how little regard they ever had for anything but the end of the notion of the Palestinian state.  One side is weak, the other will except nothing less than total victory.  Neither side is negotiating in good faith.  Whether you agree with the leak or not, any chance at peace right now is certainly gone for the foreseeable future.