Yesterday, I noted the ironic metaphor contained in the comments of the Palestinian and Israeli responses to George Mitchell’s resignation. In the first of two paragraphs I quoted from the New York Times account of that resignation, Fatah’s senior foreign affairs person blamed Israeli intransigence for the failure of peace talks, and in the second, a spokesperson for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, blamed the Palestinians. After quoting the paragraphs, I wrote:
Now, I am one who believes that the Palestinians have given up almost everything and the Israelis almost nothing in these past 60-plus years since Israel became a state in 1948, but… just on the level of ironic metaphor, could these two paragraphs be any better?
Now, today, Al Jazeera has an opinion piece written by the man who earlier this year leaked 1,600 documents related to the so-called “peace process” to Al Jazeera and The Guardian. He is Ziyad Clot, a French lawyer of Palestinian descent who served as legal adviser in the Annapolis, Maryland, negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Up until now, his identity was unknown. In the Al Jazeera piece, he explains why he decided to out himself, and why he leaked the documents in the first place (emphasis is mine):
In Palestine, the time for national reconciliation has come. On the eve of the 63rd commemoration of the Nakba, this is a long-awaited and hopeful moment. Earlier this year, the release by Al Jazeera and the Guardian of 1,600 documents related to the mislabelled “peace process” caused deep consternation amongst Palestinians and in the Arab world. Covering more than ten years of talks (1999-2010) between Israel and the PLO, these “Palestine Papers” illustrate the tragic consequences of a highly inequitable and destructive political process grounded on the assumption that the Palestinians could effectively negotiate their rights and achieve self-determination while enduring the hardship of the Israeli occupation.Since my name was circulated as one of the possible sources of these leaks, I would like to clarify here the extent of my involvement in these revelations and explain my motivations. I have always acted in fact in the best interest of the Palestinian people, in its entirety, and to the full extent of my capacity.
My own experience with the “peace process” started in Ramallah in January 2008 after I was recruited as an adviser for the Negotiation Support Unit (NSU) of the PLO, specifically in charge of the Palestinian refugee file. That was a few weeks after a goal had been set at the Annapolis conference: the creation of the Palestinian State by the end of 2008. Only 11 months into my job, in November of that same year, I resigned. By December 2008, instead of the establishment of a State in Palestine, I witnessed on TV the killing of more than 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli army.
My strong motives for leaving my position with the NSU and my assessment of the “peace process” were clearly detailed to Palestinian negotiators in my resignation letter dated of 9th November 2008.
The “peace negotiations” were a deceptive farce, whereby biased terms were unilaterally imposed by Israel and systematically endorsed by the US and EU capitals. Far from enabling a negotiated fair end of the conflict, the pursuit of the Oslo process has deepened Israeli segregationist policies and justified the tightening of the security control imposed on the Palestinian population as well as its geographical fragmentation. Far for preserving the land on which to build a State, it has tolerated the intensification of the colonisation of the Palestinian territory. Far from maintaining a national cohesion, the process I participated in, albeit briefly, proved to be instrumental in creating and aggravating divisions amongst Palestinians. In its most recent developments, it became a cruel enterprise from which the Palestinians of Gaza have suffered the most. Last but not least, these negotiations excluded for the most part the great majority of the Palestinian people: the 7 million-Palestinian refugees. My experience over those 11 months spent in Ramallah confirms in fact that the PLO, given its structure, was not in a position to represent all Palestinian rights and interests.
After I resigned, I believed I had a duty to inform the public of the most alarming developments of the Israeli-Palestinian talks. These talks were unfair, misleading and became unsustainable. Tragically, the Palestinians were left uninformed of the fate of their individual and collective rights in the negotiations and their divided political leaderships were not held accountable for their decisions or inaction.
Al Jazeera has the complete set of leaked documents here.
Steve Clemons comments at The Huffington Post:
This account reinforces for me why I believe that ultimately neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli political system can bear the stress of making constructive compromises leading to a two-state solution. Sitting both parties in the room and pushing them to work toward compromise is folly.
A structure of stakeholders that shoves the parties forward, with them reluctant but ultimately agreeing, is the only way I feel that a stable two-state producing equilibrium can be reached.
In blunter words, the United States needs to stop “urging” and “encouraging” Israel to end the occupation, to remove the settlements, and to negotiate with the Palestinian people in good faith. Israel will never do this on its own. It’s time to play hardball. If it takes ending all military aid to Israel, then that’s what should be done. But in the broadest sense, what has to happen — as confirmed by The Palestine Papers and Ziyad Clot’s article — is that the U.S. government has to end the pretense that Israel’s behavior is self-defensive, that Israel’s totally legitimate and essential right to exist is actually endangered by the Palestinian people, or that this is any kind of explanation for Israel’s military and political policies toward the Palestinians. The U.S. government has to end the pretense that Israel would ‘end the occupation tomorrow’ if the Palestinians would stop shooting rockets into Israel. The U.S. government has to end the pretense that Israel wants or has any intention of ending the occupation or the construction of new settlements. The U.S. government has to end the pretense that it’s Palestinian aggression rather than Israel’s colonialist ambitions that is the major roadblock to a two-state solution. The U.S. government has to end the pretense that we can influence Israel’s behavior by ‘understanding’ the ‘dilemma’ Israel faces, and that there is ‘another side’ to this story that the world refuses to see. Of course, there is ‘another side’ — probably many other sides — in terms of opinion and belief. But in terms of what is real and true about who has the power, about who is being oppressed and persecuted, about whose rights to self-determination are being crushed, about who wants to destroy whom, and whose intransigence is the reason for the failure of the peace process, there are not two equally valid sides of the story. And we have to end the pretense that there are.
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