The Palestine Papers, or some of them, are now out and causing turmoil in lots of places.
There is a great deal of commentary surrounding those papers about what the Palestinian side was or was not willing privately to give or concede to the Israelis. There are also fragments of the Israeli side in the process, such as FM Livni's notion that she did not want to take responsibility for lost Israeli lives (I'm trying for a neutral term there) if settlements presently in the WB were transferred to PA control in a border deal, because she was sure they would be murdered as soon as the transfer occurred, that their lives would not be safe. According to Ha'aretz yesterday.
And there is, of course, in the Israeli papers and elsewhere a notion that somehow the effect of the Palestinian Papers is unfair to Israel because it does not show the purportedly reasonable positions the Israelis were putting forth which gave rise to what we see in the Palestinian papers or in response to them. Without saying what they were.
So, what were they? Inquiring minds, and those who claim balance is lacking because these 'reasonable' positions are not described, want to know.
One of the problems with interpreting the Palestine Papers is that they are only the papers of one side. In order to understand what was actually going on, some rational description of what the other side was saying of which these conversations described in the PPs are a part, is needed.
I write here because one of the logistical problems of getting that question answered is not available to me or most Kossacks, that is, seeing if that information is back in the deep Archives, about to be roiled with the new DK4 introduction next week. While it may be that prior posters have covered this exhaustively, it seems to need doing again, with these papers in mind. One example only is a remark seen there which involved letting the settlement of Ariel stay as long as the PA got the rights to the water underneath it; water may well be a major issue of discussion in these talks, which ended with Cast Lead.
I believe it would be helpful at this point if those Kossacks who know post or repost what they know of the specific Israeli positions in these negotiations, and how those positions affected what we can see here. Were there issues which were sort of resolved, subject to the resultion of others. Were there those which were the ones which actually prevented a complete deal because they were not resolved or never could be given what they were? Nobody here who does not have that information can deal with interpretion of the the responses. All we have is the assertion that one side was being reasonable and the other either was not or was issuing 'demands', characterizations which do not increase understanding. Without that information, we can see a tango but only one of the dancers.
Links are gooood.
Having half the conversation is an otherwise unresolvable problem to both sides, and we all need to see what both sides were at the points described in the Palestine Papers. So I am asking Kossacks to provide what specific information they have on these issues, particularly the positions the Israeli side actually took in these negotiations, as specific as possible, as we all see the smoke that generalizations produce here.