The interesting thing about what the Palestine Papers reveal is also in relation to public relations and private diplomacy. The standard theme of Israeli propaganda after negotiations collapsed after the 2000 Camp David negotiations was that Israel had offered the Palestinians everything, but the intransigent and ungrateful Palestinians had rejected it all, proving that the Israelis had no partner for peace. The Palestinian leadership never bothered with public relations, and it was largely left to academics and left wing Israeli negotiators to reveal that this story was far from the truth. For example, after the Camp David proposals, the two parties negotiated at Taba (negotiations ended unilaterally by Israel). Israel’s chief negotiator at Taba, Shlomo Ben Ami, said if he were a Palestinian he would have rejected the Camp David proposal. The Palestine Papers include maps of the Camp David proposal. They show clearly how Ariel and Maale Adumim are used to dissect the West Bank into three non-contiguous cantons, with settlements dotting the landscape, connected by roads, further dividing Palestinian towns and areas from each other. Perhaps this will finally put an end to the favourite Zionist myth of Israeli generosity, met by Palestinian intransigence and rejectionism.
This is only one part of a longer story that the Palestine Papers reveal.Here's the map that Brull says that the Palestine Papers reveal:
And the maps are a complete lie.
Dennis Ross, who was there, said no map was drawn, but he shows the fake Palestinian Arab version of the map, along with what the Camp David offer really looked like:
The real offer - which was sweetened significantly at Taba - was already for a quite contiguous state.
Now that we see that Brull is not averse to lying, we can find more gems in his screed.
He goes through his Palestinian Arab version of history:
Israeli historians confirmed that the Palestinians who did not flee were driven out of Palestine through a mixture of measures including Zionist terrorism, psychological warfare and outright expulsions.He of course does not mention the percentages of Arabs who fled versus those who were forced out. No one knows the actual numbers, but the vast majority were not expelled. Most Arabs never saw an Israeli soldier and fled because of wild Arab rumors of atrocities that never happened or that were vastly exaggerated. The wealthier Arabs left almost immediately after the partition vote, as they did in the 1930s, expecting to return after the fighting ended - and leaving their poorer cousins behind without leaders. And some (but not most) were indeed told to leave by Arab leaders themselves.
There is a third category that Brull ignores, though: those that stayed and became citizens of the state. An option that was simply not available for Jews in the Old City or Gush Etzion. Those people prove his claim that those "who did not flee were driven out" to be, again, a lie.
If there was one side that adopted the concept of "ethnic cleansing" from the start and continued throughout the 30 years of Mandate history, it was the Arabs - at Tel Chai, Petah Tikva (failed attempt), Hebron, Gaza, Jenin, Shchem/Nablus, Jerusalem's Old City (beginning in 1936), Atarot, Neveh Yaakov, Bet HaAravah and the 4 Gush Etzion Bloc kibbutzim. [h/t YM]
Israel proceeded to conquer the remaining 22 per cent of historic Palestine in 1967.Whenever you see the words "historic Palestine" you know that you are dealing with a liar. Historic Palestine includes part of Jordan and Lebanon, parts that today's "Palestinians" have no desire for. For the same reasons they had no desire for a state in the West Bank while Jordan controlled it.
It goes on from there. The article is filled with half-truths and lies. Brull is rabidly anti-Israel and he uses the release of the papers as a reason to get op-ed space that simply uses the papers as a peg to bash Israel.
And Australia's ABC is more than happy to host the lies.