Promoting Palestinian Terrorism: A look back at the media coverage of the Palestine Papers

by Robert Harris (April 2012)

A media orchestrated political storm blew through the volatile Middle East last year with the release of over 1,600 confidential documents relating to Palestinian negotiations with Israel, in an effort to obtain a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The event was notable, not only for being the largest leak relating to the conflict itself but for the way in which it was spun by the media institutions involved, thus offering a rather unique insight into the way these agenda-driven outlets form the news.

The Palestinians were apparently willing to largely forfeit the right of return for the so-called Palestinian refugees (according to the uniquely liberal UNRWA definition of the term) with the exception of a symbolic 100,000. International control of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, which sits on the remains of the holiest of Jewish sites, was purposed until a permanent arrangement was reached.

Responsible journalism or propaganda?

Al Jazeera introduced the material on the 23^rd to fanfare whilst asserting the very noblest of reasons for releasing the papers:

In view of such noble sentiments one would have thought this a Copernican event where understanding of the Middle East would be turned upside down in perpetuity! And yet despite the comforting words, some that support Israel were incredulous, an understandable reaction when confronted by a supposed reality opposing that to which one is accustomed. Surprise or shock seemed to be a common response amongst supporters of Israel but scepticism was perhaps most appropriate given the sources of this tale.

Seamus Milne, Guardian associate editor, headed the Palestine Papers project, which he described as

Milne contrasts the rotten PA with real liberators like the North-Vietnamese/Vietcong and Algerian National Liberation Front. Of course both were very destructive movements under which many people suffered, illustrating yet again the worrying left-wing tendency of placing ideology above human life.

The Jerusalem Issue

Supposedly the Palestinian Authority was prepared to concede all Jewish neighbourhoods in and around East Jerusalem with the exception of Har Homa, as well as the Armenian Quarter, during the 2007-08 talks between Olmert and the PA. This point was one of the principle revelations dwelt upon.

Substance versus spin

For example, one of the leaked memos during the talks attests that 198 prisoners were released by Israel upon request of the PA, while the PA offered nothing in return for the gesture, suggesting strength instead of weakness. Al Jazeera also baselessly blamed the PA for preventing the release of thousands of Hamas prisoners.

Can PLO accept a solution to refugees without recognition of responsibility from Israel?

No. Such a phrasing is potentially detrimental as it overlooks the singularity of the Palestinian refugee issue.

Please note, other sources, such as CIF Watch, Elder of Ziyon, and Christians for Fair Witness, provide detailed analysis of the numerous other obfuscations constructed by Al Jazeera and The Guardian from the leaks.

Contemporaneous accounts of the Olmert-Abbas process

Abbas adopted a tough stance, rather than meekly holding out a begging bowl, whilst Olmert conceded around 93%/95% of the West Bank territory demanded by Abbas/Fatah with territorial trades of between 5%/6.5% to make up the difference, and a corridor to link the West Bank and Gaza as one entity. The division of Jerusalem was to be dealt with at a later time in one such arrangement.

The reports at the time illustrated that Abbas was hardly a pushover. According to some sources he threatened to quit his presidential post if not given a sufficiently good deal, to quote INN:

Reports focused on the generous terms of the peace deal, for example Olmert appeared to be discussing the transfer of 98.1 percent of the West Bank. Judging by some of the statements he made at the time, there also appeared to be urgency in his mission, due to a worry over changing circumstances:

We can argue about every small detail and find that when we are ready for an agreement there is no partner and no international support.

Some speculated Olmert was trying to take a lead over Livni, who was challenging his leadership of the Kadima party.

However, talks ended three months earlier, and there were strong dismissals of the offer from the Palestinian side, long before the Gaza war started. According to an interview Olmert gave in 2009:

The response of the Palestinian Authority

Leaders in the Palestinian Authority immediately denied the veracity of the Palestine Papers, some saying parts of the documents were fabricated. They believed Al Jazeera intended to discredit the PA, which would be in the interest of rival factions Hamas and Hizbullah. Protests soon followed.

Ahmed Qureia, a senior negotiator in the talks, stated:

many parts of the documents were fabricated, as part of the incitement against the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian leadership.

One PA statement asserted that many ideas have been discussed as part of the negotiations process, including ideas they would never have agreed to. Such discussions stripped of context would be highly damaging.

Interestingly, President Mahmoud Abbas said that he kept Arab countries fully briefed on the negotiations with Israel. He publicly sought permission from the Arab League to hold talks during some of the periods in question.

All the Arab countries know our position. We have been providing the Arab countries with details about the negotiations and all that we were offered.

These documents are designed to create confusion. I saw them [Al-Jazeera] broadcast things that they attributed to Palestinians. In fact, these were Israeli [proposals].

Overt Incitement

Al-Jazeera featured some extraordinary commentary on the leaks. The language used makes it difficult to deny the charge of incitement:

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has shown operational willingness to co-operate with Israel to kill its own people, The Palestine Papers indicate.

During the furore demonstrators in Gaza burned effigies of Abbas and assistants, with Israeli flags hanging around the necks. A coffin featuring pictures of Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and Saeb Erekat, was also torched.

The Guardian published a cartoon of Abbas as an Orthodox Jew clutching an uzi. The image is by Carlos Latuff, well known for his antisemitic themes.

Erekat spoke frankly:

Two weeks after the release of the Papers, Erekat resigned as chief negotiator, citing responsibility for the leaks, and concern over matters of safety.

An ideologically pro-Palestinian attack

This stance reflects one of the principle claims of the pro-Palestinian movement: an aggressive Israel, determined to Judaise Jerusalem and colonise the West Bank, refuses to make peace with the peace-loving Palestinians. Although unjustified by the leaks, this is the meme Al Jazeera/Guardian adopted.

Of course this posturing was not unique to The Guardian and Al Jazeera at the time. The mainstream media adopted the line those two news outlets took. Shock was expressed about a weak PA but media commentators firmly grasped the familiar sight of a belligerent Israel, an image that they helped create.

Promoting a terrorist agenda at The Guardian

The unusually harsh criticism directed at the Palestinian Authority led to a distinct suspicion amongst some commentators that Al Jazeera and The Guardian were not only trying to taint Israel but destroy the PA in the eyes of Palestinians. Both outlets strongly advocated the involvement of Hamas over the PA:

The Palestinian Authority may continue as an employer but, as of today, its legitimacy as negotiators will have all but ended on the Palestinian street.

Thus, The Guardian clearly knew their coverage would cause a lot of damage. On the final day of the release of the papers, an article in The Guardian by Osama Hamdan, a Hamas official no less, states:

The Palestinian negotiators named and quoted in these documents have betrayed their people and the Palestinian cause. We are in no doubt that, as a result of these revelations, they have lost their credibility for good. It is unthinkable that the Palestinian people will ever approve any deal concluded with the Israelis by this team of negotiators, for they will always be suspected of selling out and of betraying the cause. The Palestinian people can never believe that what these individuals pledge in public reflects how they bargain or deal in private.

As an immediate response to these revelations, we in Hamas have begun a series of communications and meetings with Palestinian factions and prominent personalities to discuss practical measures. It is our responsibility to regain the initiative in order to protect our cause and isolate those who have betrayed it.

Most recently The Guardian has been promoting the Global March to Jerusalem campaign, which is strongly aligned with Iran, Hamas, and a number of other proscribed terrorist organisations.

With The Guardian possessing some of the same key positions as Hamas, defending Hamas to the hilt in certain articles, advancing a stance that empowers Hamas, and providing them with a platform to echo said views, should it not be evident that this media institution supports a recognised terrorist group?

Coming in the aftermath of the murder of three Jewish children, a rabbi and three solders on French soil recently, French president, Nicolas Sarkozy has joined Britain in preventing the entry of Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, the famous Qatari-based cleric who regularly appears on the Al Jazeera. Al-Qaradawi has defended terrorist insurgency in Iraq which caused the death of over 100,000 civilians, claimed the Holocaust was divine punishment for the Jewish people whilst simultaneously denying it as exaggerated, and has celebrated Palestinian terrorism.

Oh Allah, take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.

With their support of militant Islam, Iraqi and Afghani insurgents, and with the head tax now being collected by Iraqi Islamists, one might well wonder if Al Jazeera should in fact be Al Jizya?

A few months later Ziyad Clot admitted in The Guardian that he was one source of the leaks:

Clot became an advisor to the Emir of Qatar after his stint at the NSU, and reputedly worked for Al Jazeera.

the Palestine papers illustrated the tragic consequences of an inequitable and destructive political process which had been based on the assumption that the Palestinians could in effect negotiate their rights and achieve self-determination while enduring the hardship of the Israeli occupation.

Bizarrely, it would seem that Clot wants a solution before negotiations have even begun, or none at all.

My friends, when people in Cairo and Tunis and now Libya, maybe, can overtake regimes entrenched, as well-funded and well-armed as those regimes, that is the pure proof that non-violent resistance and other forms of resistance can achieve a different outcome. That is what it (the PA) has abandoned to its own detriment and that is what you see in these Papers.

The Qatari Connection

Ironically, in one of the leaked documents Ahmed Qurei, a negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, told Tzipi Livni:

Iran is against us, Qatar is against us

In the aftermath of the Palileaks furore, Qatar has been increasingly associated with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In February Abbas, Erekat, and Hamas leader Kalid Mashaal, visited the Emir of Qatar, and held a conference in the capital of Doha, to implement an important reconciliation agreement between the rival Palestinian groups.

Al Jazeera was established and bankrolled substantially by the Emir. The suspicion that it serves Qatar is not unfounded since the broadcaster (particularly its Arabic channel) closely tracks Qatari foreign policy.

With the Palestinian conflict occupying the foremost importance in the Middle East, and Al Jazeera having tamed the PA, Qatar is now ideally placed to benefit from a prestigious role in the conflict.

It has been noted that Al Jazeera does not criticise Qatar, even though it is a monarchy with no independent legislature. Although not the most repressive nation in the region, it has a poor human rights record. The fact that The Guardian not only fails to criticise Qatar but has been known to feature glowing accounts of the nation may indicate an uncomfortably friendly relationship with the ruling elite.

Unpleasant Consequences

The PA has pushed one message at the international community, and something very different to the people to which they ought to be selling a fair peace settlement. It did not bode well for any peace deal. The anti-Israeli/Jewish hate mongering that was the norm in Palestinian culture came back to haunt a ruling elite that fostered it, who were in turn seen as not being extreme enough in their stance on Israel.

It is difficult to evaluate what influence the Palestine Papers furore had on the Arab Spring but it is plausible to suggest they were a further ingredient in an increasingly explosive mix. The PA is seen as a secular relatively moderate movement, which its enemies accuse of being in the pockets of the West. Mubarak, a friend to Abbas, was toppled in part for similar reasons. The Muslim Brotherhood may also play a role in a fragile Jordan, where there were mass demonstrations supporting Hamas.

Conclusion

Both institutions knew the leaks in selective form represented a huge obstacle for the PA to recover from. Yet they further distorted and misrepresented the content to forward a political agenda that would devastate any possible peace process. A weak discredited PA would find it near impossible to offer a deal to its people. This in turn greatly aided the agenda of terrorist groups hostile to a peaceful solution. It is also evident that they knowingly incited against the elected representatives of the Palestinian people.

The calculated release and spin of the Palestine Papers involved the promotion of a continued state of terrorism, and has had a corrosive impact on a conflict already virtually impossible to resolve, whereby certain parties with extremist agendas eliminated the potential of a future process. The seriousness of such an act should not be underestimated, and as such both companies deserve to be subject to censure.

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