CNN.com
Leaks show Palestinian Authority is selling out its people
By Nadia Hijab, Special to CNNc/div>
i/div>
v
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Nadia Hijab: Palestinian Authority took aim at Al-Jazeera for leaking
1,600 documents
* Documents detail years of concessions to Israel behind closed doors, she
says
* Hijab: Leaks confirm Palestinian fears that a major sell-out of their
rights was at hand
* Palestinian civil society must decide if it's time to challenge
Palestinian Authority, she writes
Editor's note: Nadia Hijab is co-director of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy
Network.
(CNN) -- In time-honored style, the Palestinian Authority took aim at the
Qatar-based news network Al-Jazeera for its release of over 1,600 documents
detailing Palestinian-Israeli negotiations from 1999 to 2010.
There is little love lost between the Fatah-dominated authority and Al-Jazeera.
They have previously clashed bitterly over news coverage, and Qatar is known to
have a soft spot for Hamas.
By seeking to focus attention on Al-Jazeera and its host country, the
Palestinian Authority is following the lead of its main donor and security
guarantor, the United States, in its response to WikiLeaks, arguing that the
problem lies not in the news but its purveyor. Of course, the reverse is true.
The leaks bring to light the horrors governments commit in their people's names.
Palestinian leaders slam Al-Jazeera over leaks
It is the authority's actions that are at fault. The authority is supposed to
be accountable to the Palestine Liberation Organization, which represents the
Palestinian people, when it comes to negotiations. But since the Oslo peace
process began in 1993, the Ramallah-based authority has used the PLO as a tool
as it made one concession after another in its effort to salvage something from
its failed strategy in the cantons to which it has been confined.
And it did so behind closed doors, leaving the Palestinian people in the dark.
The leaks have let the sunshine in. They confirm what most Palestinians already
feared, that a major sell-out of their rights, including the right to return
and Jerusalem, was planned. Despite the secrecy, it was clear that no good
could come of a process where the Palestinian side was going naked into the
negotiating room, having left itself without a single source of potential power
-- diplomatic, popular, or legal.
Leaked documents: Palestinians agreed to 'symbolic' return
The reason the Palestinian Authority couldn't swing a deal was not for lack of
effort. Rather, as the leaks expose, the Israelis have absolutely no interest
in stopping their relentless colonization of occupied Palestinian land and
meeting the authority halfway.
Why should they? Israel controls everything and has the authority where it
wants it, completely dependent on its occupier -- even for its freedom of
movement to get to meetings. Just before the Annapolis peace conference in
November 2007, former Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei and his team were actually
prevented from reaching a meeting with Israeli negotiators. Qurei's rank
counted for nothing vis-à-vis the Israeli soldiers at the roadblock to
Jerusalem.
Palestinians have not been simply sitting on their hands and waiting for these
leaders to come to their senses. Instead, for nearly six years, they have been
testing other sources of power to achieve their rights, including the popular
struggle villagers are waging against the wall Israel is building on their land
and the international movement that is hearkening to the 2005 Palestinian civil
society call to boycott Israel.
David Frum: Will leaks end Mideast peace process?
Palestinian civil society faces this question: Is it finally time to directly
challenge the Palestinian Authority because it does not represent the people
and so has no right to negotiate in their name? And to demand that the PLO be
revived as an institution that is truly representative of Palestinian
aspirations? There is no doubt that the Al-Jazeera leaks have brought this
moment much closer.
The leaks have also made it easier for Palestinian civil society to make the
case against the Palestinian Authority in the international arena. The
authority is belatedly seeking to move away from total reliance on the United
States and get the United Nations and its member states re-involved in the
question of Palestine.
The number of countries lining up to recognize Palestinian statehood at the
authority's request is increasing, and that is a good thing -- but only if
statehood is a vehicle for fulfillment of rights and not a means for Israel to
cement its control in other ways.
If the Palestinian state-to-be is reduced to a sham, then international
recognition is meaningless and must be stopped. Governments may be willing to
give Palestinian civil society a more sympathetic hearing now that the leaked
documents reveal the extent of the authority's willingness to trade away so
many rights.
There is no doubt that a major task looms, a clearing of the Augean stables to
get at the things that matter. It is a task that will not be carried out by a
Hercules, but rather by the single-minded determination of a dispersed and
oppressed people that has struggled for its rights for nearly a century, and
will not give up.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Nadia Hijab.
Links referenced within this article
Al-Shabaka,
http://al-shabaka.org/
Palestinian leaders slam Al-Jazeera over leaks
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/01/24/mideast.al.jazeera.leaks/index.html/
Leaked documents: Palestinians agreed to 'symbolic' return
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/01/25/mideast.al.jazeera.leaks/index.html?iref=allsearch
David Frum: Will leaks end Mideast peace process?
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/24/frum.mideast.papers/index.html?iref=allsearch/
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http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/26/hijab.palestinian.authority/index.html?hpt=C2
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