Holy Pants, Palestine is Leaking.

In Which Ash loves Al-Jazeera, and Partially Outs her Sentiments on Palestine 

A couple months ago, someone got ahold of a treasure chest of confidential information--namely, a slew of documents chronicling the ongoing negotiations between Israeli, US and Palestinian Authority (PA) officials about the ubiquitous Israel/Palestine Conflict (tm). And as has happened since the dawn of print media, they took this important information to a news organization, because people should be talking about this shit.

The Palestine Papers, leaked to Al-Jazeera (which is so excellent I don't even know how to talk about it), were written between 1999 and 2010, and consist of a hodgepodge of stuff generated during a decade of pseudo-diplomatic arguing about who gets to live where and when they're going to stop bothering each other about it: memos, emails, powerpoints, notes on napkins. (Reason Ash Loves Al-Jazeera # 427: they admit highly relevant notes on napkins as legitimate journalistic input material.) 
The reason people care about this stuff is relatively easy to understand--there tends to be a lot of rhetoric, misinformation, oversimplification and over-complication of the entire conflict-and-negotiation-mess, often on both sides of the problem. As a cure for that, primary source stuff of any sort tends to cut the aforementioned bullshit fairly well.

The papers and attendant analysis are being rolled out to publication during the next three days, under this amazing rationale:

"We present these papers as a service to our viewers and readers as a reflection of our fundamental belief – that public debate and public policies grow, flourish and endure when given air and light."

(Reason Ash Loves Al-Jazeera # 239: despite all trends in the sector to the contrary, they doggedly persist in being an ACTUAL NEWS ORGANIZATION.)

Disclaimer about Discussion on Matters of Palestine/Israel
I don't know how closely you've been following the clusterfuck that is the Israel/Palestine issue, but there are a lot of concepts that may be unfamiliar to you that are fairly central to a) any discussion in depth about Palestine and b) any attempt to solve the problems. I'll link to explanatory articles wherever possible when carelessly dropping buzzwords, but it's in your court to click 'em and figure out exactly wtf I'm talking about.
Also, I want to make it abundantly clear my position on this highly-charged area of news, so that I don't get accused of discriminatory behaviour because of misunderstanding:  I believe the actions of a national entity NEVER represent every individual of that nation. When I'm talking about Israel, I mean the government, not the people; when I talk about Palestine, I mean the government, not the people. Nor do I equate Israel with Judaism, or Palestine with Islam. I reserve the right to engage Israel and Palestine as political, not religious, entities, and I reserve the right to distinguish between Zionism and Judaism, and fundamentalism from Islam. 

Phew. 

*DING!* Palestine Papers, First Round!

embiggening this will show
 lots of Palestine-to-Israel territory...
and not a whole lot of Israel-to-Palestine
territory. Hmm.

-2008: Land Swap! Sometime in 2008 the PA came to Israel with a proposal to basically hand over all the Palestinian land that Israel's been illegally settling, even in East Jerusalem. Their detractors spent a little while looking shocked--it appears that they didn't even try to keep the areas of East Jerusalem they were legally entitled to. From Al-Jazeera:

"The PA, in other words, never even really negotiated the issue; their representatives gave away almost everything to the Israelis, without pressuring them for concessions or compromise. Erekat seemed to realise this – perhaps belatedly – in a January 2010 meeting with [US president Barack] Obama's adviser David Hale.

Erekat: Israelis want the two-state solution but they don’t trust. They want it more than you think, sometimes more than Palestinians. What is in that paper gives them the biggest Yerushalaim in Jewish history, symbolic number of refugees return, demilitarised state… what more can I give?"

In response, Ehud Olmert, former Prime Minister of Israel, made an offer to Mahmoud Abbas, former head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the PA.

Israel's Offer: we officially annex all the land we've already stolen from you and settled, and you get a small 5.5% of Israeli territory. You also get one safe road between Gaza and the West Bank that you can pass through, but that we still officially own. We acknowledge the suffering of Palestinian refugees (as long as we can also mention the suffering of Israelis in tandem), but we take no responsibility for them, for reasons that sasspot who's summarizing this doesn't understand.

Basically, 2008 Palestine said "Look, we're tired of this, just keep the stuff you stole, whatever", and 2008  Israel said "Yeah. You hand it all over. Plus give me your watch."

One of the biggest push-button issues in the talks was the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, smack dab in the West Bank. With its position in the country, it's in danger of being annexed to Palestine if a two-state solution with 1967 borders is ever reached--but as it's basically an illegal bedroom community for Jerusalem, nobody's really pleased about any of the options. The Israeli's don't want to give it up; the Palestinians don't want to cede it, and the residents are worried about violence if either group has full control. 


Al Jazeera, being excellent, has meeting minutes posted between the two sides as they try redefining borders. (Reason Ash Loves Al-Jazeera # 135: the AlJazeera Transparency Unit.) It's cool, and gives a feeling of the attitudes present in the room. Ten bucks says that if in three years no one's converted this into a screenplay and it's all over HBO, I'll do it myself. 


-Late 2010: What's Going On in the Wild World of Negotiation Now?

Look at those bad boys. Observe the strut. Ridiculous.

BBC has a fairly decent Q&A style article about what the talks looked like in late 2010, brokered by Obama. If your head is spinning a little, I'd recommend this one as the last link before web-curator-fatigue sets in.
They've also got a rehash of Israeli/Arab/Palestinian Press debating the rumours current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planned on withdrawing from the illegal settlements in the West Bank, after the short freeze on illegal settlement activity expired.


-Now: Many Muslims: Who the Pants are the PA to Hand Over Jerusalem??
In the past, the perceived biggest issue in the way of the two-state solution was the delineation of the holy sites. For those of you who slept through geography, the area that Palestine and Israel occupy is kind of a big religious deal, with lots of big religious landmarks and heritage sites for lots of big religions. Understandably, non-secular groups don't particularly like their holy sites mucked around, and would generally like to be able to visit them when they like. Sounds sensible, even to a cold-certified Agnostic like me.
So the PA's flexibility on Jerusalem is ruffling feathers all over the Arab world. In the past, Yasser Arafat had hardlined on keeping the Arab portion of Jerusalem under Palestinian control in order to protect and connect The Haram al-Sharif (and other special sites) to the Muslim world. This approach was really, really popular--especially since so many people (especially Palestinians) have been killed there, and so many attempts to claim the space for Judaic holy ground have been made by Israel. Hell, Ariel Sharon's visit to the place sparked the Second Intifada. This is serious shit.
So the negotiator in this is catching a lot of flak for his flippant treatment of the issue, even from Israelis. 


And this rehash has exhausted me, so if things totally happen before tomorrow, I'll cover them later.