Palestine Papers. When Pragmatism Sparks Outrage
The broadcast and publishing of the leaked ‘Palestine papers’ by Al Jazeera and the Guardian puts a spotlight on some issues which are actually much more interesting and far-reaching than the papers themselves. After all, it is only those who hold completely unrealistic ideas about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict who could claim to be surprised by their content; the rest of us know that in the end, the 2008 Olmert offer is more or less how the future will look because it represents the most Israel can give and the least that the Palestinians can accept.
Nevertheless, we have witnessed waves of selective outrage from foreign journalists and commentators – their words conveying a deep sense of betrayal. Horrified by the Palestinian negotiators’ pragmatism, indignant at the very idea of compromise, they rushed to brand them as traitors and sellers-out of the Palestinian cause.
What is interesting is that these voices are for the most part not coming from the people who would actually be affected by a Palestinian/Israeli agreement. They are coming from those who sit high up in the seats of the amphitheatre, demanding loudly that their favourite gladiator below carry on the fight, despite the fact that he is already wounded, bloody and exhausted.
There is nothing new about this, of course; for many years now certain far-Left journalists, academics, politicians and other ‘pro-Palestinian’ activists who have no physical link to the conflict have displayed much more extreme and uncompromising views than the people who actually live in this region. Every time I encountered the virulent bile and blind hatred spewed by ‘pro-Palestinian’ activists during my recent years spent in the United Kingdom, I would thank my lucky stars that here in the Middle East I get to live with the Palestinian people themselves who are, in general, considerably less extreme than their foreign advocates.
Others who cheer-lead the rejection of compromise from the safety and comfort include the often foreign-born people of Palestinian descent who have made careers out of the prolonged Palestinian struggle. Most of them tend to be ideologically aligned with Hamas, such as electronic Intifada founder Ali Abunimah or ISM founder Huweida Arraf. In addition, there are foreign actors such as Iran, Syria and Qatar for whom the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is a mere side-show in a much bigger spectacle and who shore up the Hamas regime financially and militarily, ensuring that reconciliation with other Palestinians remains just as remote as compromise with Israel.
None of these actors can be honestly described as ‘pro-Palestinian’; each has its own reasons and interests – some ideological, some practical - for playing gooseberry so that Israel and the Palestinians do not reach a negotiated agreement. The very last thing on their minds is the continued suffering of the Palestinian people.
In addition to the manipulation of Western public opinion by the Guardian, which has devoted far more column space to this non-event of a leak in the past few days than can be justified (at the time of writing - 22 articles in less than 48 hours, not including the papers themselves), we also have to consider the effect upon public opinion in the Arab world and the consequences of that effect. Unlike in the West, where the public is at least in theory free to search out alternative views to those presented by the Guardian, either in other newspapers or on the internet, such opportunities are often lacking in the Middle East.
Illiteracy is high and therefore many rely on satellite television such as Al Jazeera for their knowledge of domestic and world events. Those who can read often come up against state-controlled newspapers and internet censorship. When combined, these factors make any message broadcast by Al Jazeera much more potent than it would be in the free world, particularly in light of the fact that there is no charge for viewing Al Jazeera broadcasts. The coverage of the leaked papers on Al Jazeera television has predictably been, to put it mildly, distorted. Reading the papers themselves helps correct those distortions, but of course most viewers will not or cannot do so.
As anyone with more than a passing acquaintance with the Arab/Israeli conflict knows, the prime obstacle which has prevented its conclusion for so many decades is not land, settlements or even refugees, but the basic uncompromising refusal to accept a sovereign Jewish presence in the Middle East. That stance is cultivated by leaders in the region day in and day out in educational establishments, places of worship and by way of the media. For example, Sheikh Yousef Qaradawi of the Muslim Brotherhood - one of the world’s most offensive anti-Semitic preachers – has his sermons broadcast region-wide to millions on Al Jazeera regularly.
Al Jazeera’s leaking of the ‘Palestine papers’ is just another brick added to the wall of refusal to compromise on the subject of an Israeli presence in the Middle East and it serves the interests of all those above-mentioned actors – from the British ‘Palestine Solidarity Campaign’ activist who trashes Israeli goods in a local supermarket, right through to the repressive theocratic dictatorship in Iran. Those actors have no interest in Israelis and Palestinians finding peace and prosperity through compromise, and if that means offering up the current PA negotiators as sacrifice on the grounds of their ‘betrayal’ of the Palestinian cause, then they will be more than happy to do so.
However, should the current PA administration find itself in an untenable position as a result the leaks it will be in no small part its own fault. For years PA leaders have tried to have the best of both worlds; on the one hand engaging in realistic negotiations with Israel, and on the other continuing to preach blood and thunder on the Palestinian street. Instead of preparing their people (and the surrounding Arab world) for the compromises necessary to secure a peace agreement with Israel, they continue to glorify terror and to foster incitement and unrealistic dreams of a future Palestine ‘from the river to the sea’.
The international community - and not least those involved in Middle East peace negotiations such as the Quartet - has blame to shoulder on this issue too. It has poured incredible amounts of money into the technical aspects of the Palestinian state-building project whilst steadfastly ignoring and perhaps deliberately downplaying the ideological roots of terror. It has turned a blind eye to anti-Israeli incitement in school books, mosques and on PA sponsored children’s television. It has neglected to demand of those receiving its donations that they build a society ready to receive a peace agreement and instead has concentrated its efforts on more easily attainable targets such as creating a stock market or pension reform.
In doing so, the international community has rendered the current PA administration hyper-vulnerable to precisely the kind of knock-on effects that may follow the leaking of the relatively insipid ‘Palestine papers’ and should those effects include the paralysis of an already limping peace process, it will be just as responsible for that as the gooseberry-playing ultra-Left Guardian journalist or the puppet broadcaster at Al Jazeera.
Hadar Sela is a Contributing Writer for The Propagandist living in the Middle East
