Palestine Affairs

NOVANEWS   Leaked papers show Palestinians feel quartet envoy is paternalistic and that the Israelis don't take him too seriously.  Ian Black, Middle East editor, and Seumas Milne guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 26 January 2011 Tony Blair in Jenin, West Bank. Palestinians felt he advocated an 'apartheid-like' approach to the occupied territory. Photograph: Mohamad Torokman/Reuters Tony Blair, envoy of the Middle East quartet, was attacked by Palestinian officials for being biased in favour of Israeli security needs and seeming "to advocate an apartheid-like approach to dealing with the occupied West Bank", the Palestine papers reveal. The former prime minister, appointed to the job in September 2007, made the American Colony hotel in East Jerusalem his base for efforts to boost th...

  Mahmoud Abbas asked businessman to donate $50m to Mahmoud Ahamdinejad opponents, according to the documents Ian Black and Seumas Milne guardian.co.uk,   26 January 2011  Article history   The Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas convinced a businessman to fund a radio station for Iran's opposition, according to the PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat. Photograph: Majdi Mohammed/AP The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, tried to persuade a Palestinian businessman to contribute millions of dollars to a radio station for the Iranian opposition after the country's disputed presidential elections in 2009, according to leaked documents. Abbas's move was cited by Saeb Erekat, the PLO's chief negotiator, in a meeting with the US Middle East envoy George Mitchell as evidence of the Palestinian...

NOVANEWS   • Papers reveal MI6 drew up plan for a crackdown on Hamas • PLO wanted to do more to prevent Gaza smuggling The Palestine papers Photograph: guardian.co.uk 2.16pm: Publication of the documents presents a moment of truth for the Peace process argues Gadi Baltianski, director general of the Geneva Initiative - a joint Palestinian Israeli campaign aimed finding a settlement based on previous resolutions. He urges both sides to now be more open about the negotiations. An Israeli leader can, as if nothing, commit himself to a united eternal Jerusalem and a Palestinian leader prattle about the return of every refugee to his home. Neither of them is telling the truth and they both know it. In the meanwhile, they simply increase the public's lack of confidence in the chance of achie...

NOVANEWS    Demands For The Resignation Of The Un-elected Palestinian leadership Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition   Palestinians around the world and all their supporters watched in shock, but not total surprise as secret documents, “The Palestine Papers”, detailing carefully the years of so called peace negotiations were released by the news network Al-Jazeera during the last few days. While Palestinians are struggling to win back their rights to their homes and lands, some in the un-elected leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) were making offers to give away these rights. The documents show that they were willing to give up the rights of seven million Palestinians living in forced exile to return to their homes and lands. They were willing to cede Palestinian...

NOVANEWS    by Ramona M. - IMEMC and Agencies   Documents reveal PA made series of concessions to Israel negotiators; East Jerusalem was offered and rejected since it didn't include settlements in West Bank. Palestinian negotiators secretly agreed to concede almost all Jewish areas of East Jerusalem to Israel, the Guardian newspaper and Al-Jazeera TV reported on Saturday. Some 1,600 Palestinian documents on peace talks with Israel, obtained by Al Jazeera TV and given to the Guardian, provide a glimpse into the breakdown of the peace process. The biggest revelation from the documents is that Palestinian negotiators secretly agreed to accept Israel's annexation of all but one of the neighborhoods, Har Homa, built in East Jerusalem. In an effort to move closer to independent statehood, this ...

NOVANEWS   Palestinian Lapdog Tortures its Own People to please Israel and the United States   Palestinian Solidarity Campaign Should Cut All Links with PA This shocking report comes from the Arab Organisation for Human Rights in Britain and the London-based Middle East Monitor. It outlines abuse of detainees in the West Bank, including the types of torture used by Palestinian Authority (PA) security services against detainees, as well as a description of US and Jordanian participation in the training of the perpetrators, and a critique of the EU's role in funding PA security services. The report covers cases from October 2007 to October 2010. It is important to understand that the European Union is the largest funder of these security services and the United States provides them with trai...

NOVANEWS   Palestinian Authority's apparent willingness to make huge concessions to Israel during 10 years of closed-door peace talks. The release by Al-Jazeera of sensitive documents revealing the Palestinian Authority's apparent willingness to make huge concessions to Israel during 10 years of closed-door peace talks, have put Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in an embarrassing situation. So much so, diplomatic sources have claimed, that he has asked Egypt to mediate between the PA and Qatar to stop what he sees as the "defamation" of the Authority. The documents show that there are clear contradictions between the private and public utterances of the Palestinian negotiators.   According to Al-Mesreyoon online newspaper, Abbas claims to have kept all Arab countries up-to-date on wha...

NOVANEWS   Dr. Daud Abdullah     One of the most shocking revelations of The Palestine Papers obtained by Al Jazeera relates to the demographic and territorial concessions that the Palestinian Authority was willing to give on Jerusalem. The papers show that not only did PA negotiators demonstrate a willingness to accept Israel’s annexation of all the settlements in Jerusalem, except Jabal Abu Ghneim (Har Homa), but that they were also willing to disown parts of the besieged Arab neighbourhoods in the city. Worse still, Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator, displayed clear "flexibility" regarding the sovereignty on the Haram al-Sharif. As Ahmed Qurei described the PA's concessions on East Jerusalem settlements, this was "the first time in history that we make such a proposition; we refused to...

NOVANEWS Israeli tribute to Palestinian Authority security support "confirms threat to West Bank Palestinians"   Islamic Resistance Movement The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has called the tribute paid by the Israeli Defence Minister and the Director of Israel's intelligence service to the Palestinian Authority for its security cooperation with the occupying power "a threat to the people of the occupied West Bank". In a press statement, Hamas said, "The blessings given by Ehud Barak and Yuval Diskin confirm the growing and widespread belief that the main concern of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is the security of the Zionist state and not the defence of citizen's rights as they struggle under Israel's military occupation.Spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said on 19 January, "This secu...

NOVANEWS   Ibrahim Hewitt   Israeli right-wing has been hinting strongly that Jordan is "the alternative homeland" for Palestinians As the people of Palestine come to terms with the apparent betrayal of their rights by the people appointed to negotiate with the Israelis on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, a number of commentators are declaring the "peace process" to be dead and buried. With all due respect to them, that process has never existed in any form as a genuine attempt to secure a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians; it has, from the earliest days of the Zionist movement, existed as a process whereby Israel can grab as much of historic Palestine as it can. The "peace process" has been invaluable in buying time for successive Israeli governments as they take more ...