The Palestine papers have broken a taboo. Now, arguments for peace can be open

[shaayecanaan]

"Critics of the publication of the Palestine papers by the Guardian and al-Jazeera are aiming their fire in several directions. They have variously claimed that the documents are fake; that they are partial; that they reveal nothing new; that they should never have been published; and that they help Hamas, damage the peace process and threaten to destroy the two-state solution.

Let's start with the silliest first: the claim of forgery, casting these papers as the Hitler Diaries of the Middle East. That was swiftly swept aside today by Nabil Shaath, a former member of the Palestinian negotiation team who, along with several others close to the talks, vouched for the documents' authenticity. Are they partial? Only in the sense that 1,600 pages out of tens of thousands could always be described as incomplete. Some have complained that the documents only provide the view from the Palestinian side of the negotiating table. But they purport to do nothing else. To suggest that makes them unsuitable for publication is to suggest the New York Times should never have published the Pentagon Papers without an equivalent stash of paperwork from the North Vietnamese defence ministry.

But clearly, say the critics, these were leaked by someone with an agenda. I don't know the identity of the source for the Palestine papers, but I'd be pretty surprised if they didn't have a purpose for their actions. That is true of every leak through recorded time. Should the Daily Telegraph not have published Liam Fox's letter protesting over defence cuts last autumn because the leaker of that letter clearly had a political objective? Of course not. Observe that standard and we'd never know anything. Besides, readers can usually put two and two together.

Still, say some complainers, these papers don't reveal anything we didn't know. Indeed, they are "incredibly boring", according to Noah Pollak of Commentary magazine – so boring that they warrant six separate pieces on the magazine's website.

Joining the "nothing new" chorus is Benny Morris, eager to pour cold water on the revelation that the Palestinians were ready to concede areas of East Jerusalem settled by Jews. Didn't the Guardian remember that those very areas were conceded back in 2000 as part of the "Clinton parameters" that followed the Camp David negotiations? But it's Morris who's suffering memory loss here. Surely he recalls the claim, repeated endlessly, that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians had rejected those 2000 terms. He should remember: after all, Morris was one of the lead disseminators of that message. If Palestinians now accept what they once rejected, that's news."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/25/palestine-papers-taboo-broken

[oberliner]

1. Friday sermons in West Bank slam Al-Jazeera

RAMALLAH (Ma’an) -- Sermons delivered Friday by local imams focused almost exclusively on condemnations of Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV channel over what most Imams dubbed "incitement against Palestinian leadership," Muslim worshipers said.

With tens of thousands taking to the streets in Egypt, many had expected reflections and support for the people trying to oust a 30-year-old regime.

The uncanny similarities of sermons prompted complaints over a widely held belief that the Palestinian Authority hands out prepared sermons to religious leaders for them to read. The PA Ministry of Waqf , people say, delivers instructions and salaries to imams in the West Bank.

At Ramallah's central Jamal Abdul-Nasser Mosque, PA minister of endowments Mahmoud Al-Habbash replaced the regular imam and walked to the minbar himself to deliver the speech, slamming what he called feverish campaign by Al-Jazeera against the PA and its President Mahmoud Abbas.

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=355236