The Palestine Papers give the world an unprecedented look inside the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, but they also provide a fly-on-the-wall view of how key senior American officials view their role as negotiators which, as the paprs show, apparently means never taking any position to which an Israeli government might object.
The series of six documents that provide a core element to understanding the debates that raged over Israeli settlements show just how willing the U.S. is to acquiesce to Israeli demands – and how willing they are to pressing the PA leadership to move forward on the negotiations despite Israel’s flaunting of international agreements, including freezing all settlement activity.
A February 2009 meeting memo (the subject of Part One of this series), set the tone for what was to follow – as the muted difference in perception of Israeli intentions between George Mitchell and his team and Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat deepens.
The disagreement will become the equivalent of a diplomatic donnybrook, a divisive debate between George Mitchell and his team on the one side and Saeb Erekat and the Palestinian Authority on the other. The debate, over settlements and Israel’s unwillingness to meet its international obligations, sets the stage for the current impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian Authority negotiations.