British Foreign office, BBC, European liberal-left devastated by leaked revelations on Israeli settlements, Guardian furious at “weak” and “craven” Palestinian leadership
Game over. No way back. An entire edifice of anti-Israeli demonisation definitively consigned to the scrap heap, never to be recycled again. This is the uncompromising message that comes out of yesterday’s revelations on Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. To the horror of a European political intelligentsia which has been steadfast to the point of fanatical in its opposition to Israeli “settlements” in east Jerusalem, the Palestinian leadership itself, we now know, has long accepted that the vast majority of Israeli settlements can be considered legitimate and would become part of Israel under any reasonable peace agreement.
This is utterly devastating since it simultaneously shows that everyone from the British Foreign Office and the BBC to the European Commission and the continent’s passionately anti-Israeli NGO community have been adopting a position which was significantly more uncompromising on “settlements” than the Palestinian leadership itself, and also that that same Palestinian leadership had accepted that the so called 1967 “borders” — the gold standard for practically every anti-Israeli polemic around — are irrelevant to the prospects of a lasting peace.
In one of its most resentful leader columns for years, the Guardian was nothing short of apoplectic: not so much with Israel, but with a Palestinian leadership which has effectively blown the credibility of the Guardian’s very own mantras on the MidEast straight out of the water. The Palestinian leadership, the paper declaimed, had been shown to be “weak” and “craven”. Their concessions amounted to “surrender of land Palestinians have lived on for centuries”. And, in words that look alarmingly close to the position adopted by Hamas, “The Palestinian Authority may continue as an employer but, as of today, its legitimacy as negotiators will have all but ended on the Palestinian street.” This is sheer spite.
The Palestinian leadership accepts what any reasonable person has been able to accept for decades. The Guardian then slams them as surrender monkeys. The Guardian newspaper is more hardline against Israel than the Palestinian leadership itself. And bear in mind, as you mull over the implications of that stark and unyielding state of affairs, that the Palestinian Authority is led by Mahmoud Abbas, who is a Holocaust denier.
But it gets worse. The only conceivable way out of this for the anti-Israel community is to turn this all upside down and argue — as analysts, reporters (anyone they can get their hands on) have been doing on the BBC all day — that what this really shows is the extent of Israeli “intransigence”: the Palestinians offer all these concessions, and still the Israelis say no! This was the line adopted by Paul Danahar, the BBC’s MidEast bureau chief, who quite casually averred that, “The Israelis look churlish for turning down major concessions”. Good thing no-one’s taking sides then.
Tragicomically, it just won’t wash. Privately and morally, senior Palestinians can see that there is nothing illegitimate or even especially problematic about most of the “settlements”, (as reasonable observers of the MidEast have been saying for years). This we know from the leaks themselves. But publicly and politically they cannot sell such concessions to their own people. This we know because they are currently trying to distance themselves from the leaks, and because they educate their own people in an implacable rejectionism which extends to the “moderate” Palestinian authority glorifying suicide bombers and other terrorists by naming streets and squares after them.
Logically and reasonably, the Israeli response is to see such “concessions” for what they are: well intentioned in so far as they go, but impossible to implement in practice. Quite apart from the question of Hamas-run Gaza, the Palestinians have been playing the same old game of saying one thing to one audience and something else to another. They are not a credible partner for peace, and the Israelis do not look remotely “churlish” for understanding this.
It will be interesting to see how this whole affair now plays out. But never again can the anti-Israel community play the settlement card and at the same time retain a single ounce of credibility.
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NB: Just for the record, there are no less than four opinion pieces on the subject up on the Guardian’s Comment is Free site right now. This has got them seriously rattled…
p.s. As of 3pm UK time, make that five pieces which I think is an all time record. Not that anyone’s obsessed or anything…
Tags: bbc, Guardian, Israel, leaks, Palestinians, settlemenmts, wikileaks
January 24th, 2011 at 12:21 pm
Am I being thick here or is there an incredible contradiction inherent in the BBC reporting?
They are effectively admitting that the Palestinian people are hard-line, intransigent and resentful of any compromise, whilst simultaneously presenting this as a problem of Israeli hard-line intransigence.
How are they able to get away with this?
January 24th, 2011 at 12:28 pm
So what happens to the UN security council resolution condemning the settlements? Will it be seen as the nonsensical craven antisemitic pablum that it is, and will those that vote for it or the US government who has threatened to withhold its veto, be seen as the ones standing in the way of peace? It comes as an interesting aside that no one ever questions the right to make the Palestinian areas judenrein. In fact even the US State Department seems to think this is a good idea, along with the US president. I wonder if those that push this concept really understand that their philosophy is reminiscent of Nazi Germany.But then again if you call the left the inheritors of Nazism you would be called uncivil at least. I suppose I will have to live with that.
January 24th, 2011 at 12:31 pm
The reason the liberal Left is so apoplectic is because they feel betrayed by yet another section of the Proletariat.
As you say in your book Robin they gave up on the Proletariat in the first world years ago – now here is the Proletariat in the developing world stabbing them in the back.
January 24th, 2011 at 1:05 pm
The intransigence of the Palestinian “street” is a monster that Palestinian and other Arab leaders have created over the years, with their unrelenting over-the-top rhetoric and demonization of Israel. It seems clear to any outside observer that after teaching generations of children that Israelis are the personification of evil and deserve to be slaughtered on sight, there is no way for the leadership to suddenly shift course and come to an agreement.
It’s convenient to control the news and manipulate public opinion, but it does have its down side.
January 24th, 2011 at 1:09 pm
Robin, this is spot on. Assuming the documents are in fact genuine. There’s plenty of room for us to assume they are at least in part selective, or even fabricated. But whichever way one looks at this, your analysis is excellent, as ever.
January 24th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
It is no surprise that Al Jazeera made the documents available to the UK’s (and possibly Europe’s) most rabidly anti-Israel newspaper.
The intention probably was to put as much blame on Israel as possible. And wow, have they’ve spun it. The Palestinians are now being attacked for disagreeing with the Guardian on what might constitute a just settlement.
The poor fellows at the Graun must feel dreadfully betrayed.
January 24th, 2011 at 2:47 pm
The truth. Like showing Dracula the cross.
January 24th, 2011 at 3:15 pm
Shlomo Ben-Ami has Just been on Al Jazzera with the Clinton Parameters googled in the public domain. There is hardly any difference between it and the so called Palestine papers
January 24th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
The PA is denying the authenticity of these papers. The Guardian is trying to get some reflected glory by republishing stuff Al Jazeera gave it and barely mentioning the source. What a joke!
If these are true revelations, its shows once again the ARabs saying one thing to their people, another to the Western media, and a thriud to the people they are actually dealing with.
Not partners for peace. Just natural born liars.
Not a mention of any of the context by the Guardian – the intifadas, the Karin A, the rockets from Gaza, etc. The worst of the Guardian articles came, of course, from a Jew – Jonathan Freedland, trying to claim somehow, against all reason, that the PA duplicity, if these publications are true records, is somehow Israel’s fault.
January 24th, 2011 at 4:05 pm
Judging by what has been the Palestinian strategy until now, I find these ‘leaks’ very fishy. The Pali’s have done all they can to thwart any possibility of a genuine peace. Considering that the militant Muslim world champions Palestinians for continuing to hold out against peace with Israel and accepting their presence, as part of their larger struggle against the West, makes the possibility that they were striving in any way to achieve an agreement highly unlikely.
I think this is purely a PR exercise by the Palestinians to further demonize Israel by making it look as if they were willing to negotiate on Settlements, and it was the Israelis who rejected their offers. The fact that this backfired somewhat, as evidenced by the Guardian response, was a slight miscalculation on this strategy. Though I think overall it will make Israel look worse, which is the desired effect.
For it to be true one only has to question why did they refuse to continue negotiations when Israel didn’t issue a blanket halt on settlement building.
Definitely fishy!
January 24th, 2011 at 4:23 pm
The mime of Israeli “intransigence” is well underway. In a piece this morning on NPR (The US’ National Public Radio), the speaker claimed that the papers make Israeli look bad – intransigent in fact – in the face of “unprecedented” Palestinian concessions. (They’re not known in some circles as “National Palestine Radio” for nothing.)
January 24th, 2011 at 4:29 pm
‘This is utterly devastating since it simultaneously shows that everyone from the British Foreign Office and the BBC to the European Commission and the continent’s passionately anti-Israeli NGO community have been adopting a position which was significantly more uncompromising on “settlements” than the Palestinian leadership itself,’
I think it all comes down to the meaning of Resolution 242 adopted by the UN Security Council in November 1967. From an article at the Jewish Virtual Library:
‘The British Ambassador who drafted the approved resolution, Lord Caradon, declared after the vote: “It is only the resolution that will bind us, and we regard its wording as clear.”
This literal interpretation was repeatedly declared to be the correct one by those involved in drafting the resolution. On October 29, 1969, for example, the British Foreign Secretary told the House of Commons the withdrawal envisaged by the resolution would not be from “all the territories.” When asked to explain the British position later, Lord Caradon said: “It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial.” ‘
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/UN/meaning_of_242.html
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As a very young shaver, I remember well attending a dinner in the early 1970s at which Harold Wilson, who had been the prime minister in 1967, spoke about, inter alia, Resolution 242. “If we had meant *all* the territories, we’d have said *all* the territories,” Harold Wilson said, “but because we didn’t say *all* the territories, we didn’t mean *all* the territories.”
January 24th, 2011 at 4:36 pm
It has been the intransigence of the “Arab Street” all these years that has directed “Palestinian” behaviour.
From the beginning of the 20th century through the Three No’s of Khartoum the Arabs have controlled the situation with those Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza as canon fodder.
I suppose now they have released this broadside to up the ante and goad the Palestinians into a new round of violence to appease the need for honour.
January 24th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Just a reminder: the term “1967 borders” actually refers to the 1949 armistice lines with Jordan and Egypt (not international borders, not with any Palestinian entity)
January 24th, 2011 at 4:56 pm
Robin says “…the Palestinians have been playing the same old game of saying one thing to one audience and something else to another.”
Precisely.
Even before Oslo, Arafat was really up to no good. Was all thi performance a charade from beginning to end.Judge for yourselves. Here’s Bari Atwan on Al Jazeera gleefully disclosing how Arafat planned Oslo to be a Trojan Horse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD_KQMJqPeA
January 24th, 2011 at 5:48 pm
Sorry, not Al Jazeera but ANB TV (Lebanon/London)
January 24th, 2011 at 6:01 pm
“Precisely.”
The British, on the other hand, say the same hateful things to everyone:
Hague: ‘Occupation is eroding int’l support for Israel’
http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=205024
January 25th, 2011 at 12:14 am
Privately and morally, senior Palestinians can see that there is nothing illegitimate or even especially problematic about most of the “settlements”, (as reasonable observers of the MidEast have been saying for years).
Say, you wouldn’t mind if I just barge into your home, kick you out, and “settle” it; would you?
January 25th, 2011 at 12:47 am
So does this show there’s a partner for peace, or doesn’t it?
January 25th, 2011 at 2:23 am
The de facto ‘capital’ of any Palestinian state is admitted to be Ramallah
January 25th, 2011 at 7:14 am
It is absurd to notice how the British get so worked up over “Palestine” They, who came in 1917, created one big problem, similar to India and Pakistan, cannot own up to the fact that their biased and unfair handling of the situation in the region caused he problems and if they left the parties to deal with the problem perhaps they could come to terms, but the virulent hateful daily dishing of Israel, the Jews and the Jewish culture is so unbecoming of these “enlightened” British talking heads, shown for the misinformed and clueless lot that they are. From a person who was enlisted during the 1967 war: When the code word “Red Sheet” came across the wireless, everyone thought about survival of the nation, as a Jewish State. I received the day before a supply of 600 emergency NBC kits for my unit, for distribution in the event that we were to be hit with biological weaponry. It was never taken out of th eboxed, because 4 hours after the code was aired, the war was decided by a superior performance of the IAF. No reserve soldier joined his unit in order to obtain land for settlements. We also remember a numerous violent incursion of the Fedayeens, the PLO killers, crossing the borders of Egypt (Gaza) and the West Bank of Jordan. Israel began the offensive because it could not play the diplomatic games with the feckless U.N and the utterly incapacitated President Johnson, who abandoned promised made by earlier presidents while being preoccupied in the Viet-Nam War. Once the war was over the Socialist prince General Moshe Dayan was expecting a phone call, he thought the defeated will try to open talks, because it was known than that the disputed lands could be returned minus Jerusalem. No one tried to call, over time Jews with legitimate claims to Gush Etzion (previously populated and surrendered during the 1948 war)was once again repopulated, as well as legitimate claims for homes in the the Jewish Quarter of walled Jerusalem. Any Arab politician who thought of reversing the claim to the Western Wall must have been taking too much Hashish, it was never on the table. Many Israelis will be glad to hand back the bulk of the West Bank for real security, can the Palestinian leadership sell the compromise?
January 25th, 2011 at 10:43 am
‘Say, you wouldn’t mind if I just barge into your home, kick you out, and “settle” it; would you?’
Given the obvious ties between the Jewish people and the land of Israel, you would be much better off asking that question of Americans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders. The question should also be asked of the Arab nations who ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Jews and then seized their homes and businesses. And what of the Europeans, who didn’t just “kick out” but in fact murdered Jews in their many millions before stealing all their property, the vast majority of which has never been returned.
January 25th, 2011 at 10:47 am
‘It is absurd to notice how the British get so worked up over “Palestine” ‘
And it isn’t just the British. It appears that virtually all of Europe has either actually turned against Israel or doesn’t give a damn about her:
‘Whereas 10 or 20 years ago there was a vast majority of EU countries who were definitely for Israel, now we can really rely on two countries’ — Czech Foreign Minister to Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=205080
January 25th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
To give Robin Shepherd’s readers an idea of the kind of response the Guardian’s fans have given to these revelations, here are a couple of comments which appear below a piece entitled, “Papers reveal how Palestinian leaders gave up fight over refugees”:
1) Roosterbooster198 — Recommend? (217)
24 January 2011 8:35PM
I didn’t think it was possible for me to hate Israel and the US more than I did but, all credit to them, they raised their game to new levels of atrociousness.
2)yianni – Recommend? (461)
24 January 2011 8:36PM
Palestinians to South America?
Wouldn’t be easier if the Israelis were re-settled in a place very much like Israel, namely, Arizona? It’s a desert, it’s American, everyone speaks English, there’s a fence to keep out the Mexicans, and everyone’s packing a gun. Simple. It would certainly ease the US debt by repatriating the billions in foreign and military aid that keep Israel afloat and it would cut the ground out from under the other hotheads in the mid east. As for the places sacred to the Jews, like the Wailing Wall, it could be carefully dismantled stone by stone, shipped to Arizona and put back up in Tucson.
Too wacky? Not really. Who in 1945 could have predicted that by 2011 a Jewish state would have the third most powerful military in the world and be able to threaten its neighbours with nuclear annihilation?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/24/papers-palestinian-leaders-refugees-fight
January 25th, 2011 at 2:52 pm
“Game over. No way back. An entire edifice of anti-Israeli demonisation definitively consigned to the scrap heap, never to be recycled again.”
I’m assuming, Robin, that this is written tongue-in-cheek, because as we know, the West European unintelligentsia is impervious to facts or reason. Their ideological intransigence is monumental. As the vile Guardian editorial makes clear, the tactic now is to condemn Abbas, Erekat, Fayyad and others as pro-Israel lackeys who are too willing to make concessions.
The good news is that at the time of writing, there have been no mass demonstrations on the streets of Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron. This shows that the West Bank Palestinian street is not surprised by the al-Jazeera transcripts and is resigned to the fact that concessions have to be made, if they want a Palestinian state. This is good news.
On the other hand, I was dismayed by the hard line of Israeli negotiators over Ma’aleh Adumim and Ariel. Those settlements along with others in the West Bank heartlands were founded with the express intention of preventing a Palestinian state. They were strategic blunders of the highest order, based on an assumption that Arab warmongering will continue forever and based on the hope that the Palestinians would somehow ‘disappear’.
The peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan and now Arab preoccupation with the Iranian threat suggest that the Arab world is gradually reconciling itself to Israel. The old war to eliminate Israel is now driven by Iran and its proxies alone. A peace agreement with the Palestinians will take the wind out of the Iranian sails and facilitate the use of military force against its nuclear weapons programme.
January 25th, 2011 at 4:44 pm
#25 Jonathan Karmi,
and now Iran, through Hezbollah, controls Lebanon.
January 26th, 2011 at 7:12 am
Joshua, I am amazed this lie about Israel being the X most powerful or largest army in the world. Usually I hear fifth in world – it isn’t even fifth largest in the Middle East – third presumably means that it is meant to be more powerful than Britain’s army or that it is somehow comparable with say China.
Of course, try and point out this is patent nonsense and they get very very upset.
January 26th, 2011 at 4:47 pm
I THINK WE SHOULD START A CAMPAIGN TO FORM AN ISLAMIC STATE IN MICHIGAN, U.S.A.
AFTER ALL THAT’S THE WAY THE MOSLEMS POPULATED THE HOLY LAND BY EMIGRATING THERE
FOR A BETTER LIFE STARTING IN THE 1990′S.
January 27th, 2011 at 1:55 am
Jonathan Karmi: “I’m assuming, Robin, that this is written tongue-in-cheek, because as we know, the West European unintelligentsia is impervious to facts or reason.”
Just as much as YOU Jonathan are to Jewish history, Israeli claims to the ground under Ma’aleh Adumim and Ariel, international law (the real one, not the jolly-good-fabricated).
Unfortunately, your (f)actual knowledge concerning the rights and attachment of religious Jews (I am not, but understand, support and emotionally attacched to their views) to Judea and Samaria (Yehuda v’ Shomron) is sorely lacking. As is your lack of concept of the geographic necessities of keeping those places as, for one, Martin Sherman of TAU is so brilliantly documetns in his occasional articles on Ynet and the JPost. Sorry about that. You always reliably seem to miss the target…
January 29th, 2011 at 11:09 pm
Thanks for this very interesting blog (I really enjoyed reading your book, too).
When the mud-slinging is over, the fact remains that no matter what the Palestinian negotiating team agreed on in private, it seems that unfortunately they do not have the backing of their own people for the “concessions” that they made.
January 31st, 2011 at 2:10 am
I’m not sure where I should place the Guardian – closer to the PA or the Hamas position. So far, it seems that the Guardian is a far more radical Islamist then the PA.
January 31st, 2011 at 4:12 am
It is now clear that the greatest impediment to peace is, foremost, the anti-Israel/Jewish/Zionist press and Britain along with Europe and sadly even America. It is these that prod the anti-Israel/Jewish/Zionist Arab/Muslim states to increase their demands and be more recalcitrant in their demands. It becomes apparent that a more fair press would have allowed the Arab/Muslim negotiators to be more public with their concessions and either have gotten the Arab/Muslim populace to accept their compromises or not. It has always been the Arab/Muslim leaders who say they want to have peace and will compromise but the Arab/Muslim street will not accept that. On the other side it is the Arab/Muslim street as well as the press that says the street is willing partners for compromise and peace but their leaders will not accept it. Unfortunately each is correct about the other.