Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Palestine Papers

Monday, November 16, 2020

The PLO's Red Lines for a Palestinian state, from the Palestine Papers, part 2: Jerusalem

Continuing on with the full text and my commentary of the PLO's NSU Negotiation Principles Matrix:

ISSUE

CORE PRINCIPLES

POSSIBLE FLEXIBILITY

JERUSALEM

Capital of two states

· East Jerusalem, within the pre occupation municipal lines, shall be the capital of Palestine, under full Palestinian sovereignty

· The borders in Jerusalem will be determined in

· Mutually agreed arrangements possible, based on reciprocity, on specified matters such as access rights, burial rights, visitation rights, coordination of municipal services

accordance with the rest of the borders and based on 1967 lines. All principles regarding swaps that apply to the border generally shall also apply in Jerusalem, such as the principle that all swaps must be equal and equitable.

· Land swaps in Jerusalem shall not affect maximum territorial contiguity with the rest of the West Bank

· Land swaps shall not include any Muslim and Christian Palestinian inhabited areas

· Land swaps shall not include individual houses or other small Israeli settlements

· The settlement freeze in Palestinian territories, and including all related infrastructural projects, shall be applied to East Jerusalem

· Land swaps shall not include any Muslim or Christian holy sites and holy places in East Jerusalem

· The Haram al Sharif compound, in its entirety on, above and below ground, shall be under Palestinian sovereignty and administration

· The Western Wall of the Haram, including the Wailing Wall, shall be under Palestinian sovereignty

· Israel can be granted prayer rights to the Wailing Wall (as opposed to the Western Wall) but these rights shall not imply maintenance or other rights to alter the Wall in any way.

The PLO demands ownership of the entire Old City - the Jewish Quarter, the Kotel, everything. If pushed, they will allow Jews to visit, worship and maybe even bury Jews in the Mount of Olives - under heavy guard, they way they visit Josephs' Tomb in Nablus today.

The also distinguish between the "Western Wall" and the "Wailing Wall." They would only give limited rights to Jews to pray at the location of the Kotel, but not in the tunnels adjacent to it, or the "Kotel haKatan" to the north, or the egalitarian praying area to the south.

However, the Palestinians insist on total sovereignty over the entire area, the Kotel, the tunnels.

No Jew who has the slightest pride in their Judaism could possibly agree to any of this.

Religious and cultural significance

· Safeguard the character, holiness, and freedom of worship in the city and its holy sites and places

· Safeguard the unique character of the Old City and promote the welfare of its inhabitants

· Uphold UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List regulations to the Old City

Jerusalem border regime

· The border regime between Palestine and Israel in Jerusalem shall correspond to the general border arrangements

· Specific border arrangements for Jerusalem to take into consideration the special character of Jerusalem and the Old City and with a view to enable the facilitated movement of persons and goods across the two parts of the city.

Jerusalem Coordination and Development Committee

· Establishment of a Jerusalem Coordination and Development Committee to oversee cooperation and coordination between the Palestinian Jerusalem Municipal Authority and the Israeli Jerusalem Municipal Authority

When they say that they will safeguard freedom of worship, what it left unsaid is that this is all subsumed by Islamic religious law. They would never allow Jews to visit the Temple Mount, let alone pray there, and the same would apply to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which Muslims did not allow Jews to visit for hundreds of years.

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In 2011, Al Jazeera and The Guardian released a collection of over a thousand documents related to the Israel/Palestinian peace process, most of them leaked from the Negotiations Support Unit (NSU)of the PLO headed by Saeb Erekat. They were known as The Palestine Papers. One of Erekat's many resignations came in response to these papers being leaked, presumably by one of his own people.

The articles at the time from Al Jazeera and The Guardian cherry picked out-of-context quotes from Israeli negotiators quoted in the papers to make them look bad. As far as I know, I am the only person who spent a bit of time actually reading the Palestine Papers and discovering many embarrassing things about the PLO as well as how Al Jazeera and The Guardian mischaracterized their findings.

After Saeb Erekat's death, I revisited the Papers which are still available at the Al Jazeera site. I found one document that is terrifically important, possibly the most important document in the collection, that no one else seems to have noticed - or wanted to report on.

It is called the NSU Negotiation Principles Matrix and it lists, over fifteen pages, every single issue that Israel and the PLO negotiated over, what the PLO's core position was on each issue, and what the PLO was ready to be flexible on and exactly how much.

It is a blueprint to the maximal concessions that the PLO would ever give for peace and what their true "red lines" are. This document, in all probability, is why Erekat dissolved the NSU and resigned - it showed all of the PLO's negotiating cards.

It also shows how impossible it is for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians. The PLO's public negotiating position is entirely consistent with this document and there is no reason to think that the Palestinian leadership has moved from these positions one bit.

Given that a new Biden administration will go back to an Oslo mentality, trying to negotiate a two state solution, this document is more relevant than ever. It shows, in the PLO's own words, how intransigent they are and how intransigent they always will be.

It makes no sense to pressure Israel for more concessions when the PLO already says that they won't be enough.

The matrix starts off with the PLO positions on the negotiations as a whole, upon which there is no flexibility.

ISSUE

CORE PRINCIPLES

POSSIBLE FLEXIBILITY

CORE PRINCIPLES

· No end of claims until full implementation of the CAPS

· Strong implementation and verification mechanism

· No backdoor acceptance of state with provisional borders

· No end of occupation until full withdrawal of army and all settlers and full Palestinian control over all the territory, its inhabitants and all external relations

· Full normalization with Israel by any Arab State shall only commence following the full implementation of the Treaty.

Most of these are things we have heard before as PLO demands.

Note here that the PLO is insisting that they must receive all of their demands, completely and up front, before Israel gets anything. Notice also that the PLO is speaking for all Arab states, whether they like it or not.

MUTUAL RECOGNITION

· Should include recognition of Israel along recognized and agreed borders.

· Must not include recognition of certain characteristics of the state of Israel, i.e as a Jewish state.

Here the PLO is saying that they will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state. This is meant to protect the "right to return" so they can plan to turn Israel into an Arab state by forcing it to take in all so-called "refugees" which will be discussed later on in the document.

INTERNATIONAL BORDERS

Location of international borders

· Must be based on 1967.

· 1967 line = 1949 armistice line, including all legal and agreed modifications. [Alternatively,

· Land corridor/link could be part of swap package if Palestinians get sovereignty over the land corridor.

language could specify that the West Bank includes East Jerusalem and No Man’s Land.]

· Demographic arguments cannot be used to draw the border. If Israel wants to argue demographics then UNGA 181 must be the basis of discussion.

· Negotiate size of area, not percentages.

· Swaps must be minor - not more than 100 km² in TOTAL .

· No swap of land inhabited by Palestinians, regardless of citizenship (e.g., Um el Fahm).

· Equal in quantity and quality (e.g., Jerusalem land for Jerusalem land, agricultural land for agricultural land).

· Swap only settlement built-up areas, not empty Pal land (i.e., no ‘blocs’).

· Swap only settlements adjacent to the border. Swapped areas cannot disrupt contiguity. (No annexation of Ma’ale Adumim, Ariel, Pisgat Ze’ev, Neve Ya’cov, Giv’at Ze’ev, or Efrat.)

· No swap of land inhabited by Palestinians regardless of citizenship (i.e Um el Fahm).

· Proposals for tripartite land swap with Egypt (or Jordan) should be rejected.

· No leasing.

· Most of the options with respect to borders will be in the various swap scenarios, which should be guided by the principles herein.

· Residency rights is a creative option to avoid swapping difficult areas and which may make Palestinians look more reasonable at the table.

Here the PLO is saying that the 1949 armistice lines must be the basis for the final borders, and the Palestinians should even get the "no man's land" between the Israeli and Jordanian positions in 1949.

It is saying that it does not want to gain land in Israel that includes a single Arab. Only lands where Jews would be expelled, or empty land, can be swapped for small settlement areas adjacent to the Green Line.

It explicitly says that Israel must give up all lands that are not, in the PLO's view, contiguous with the 1949 armistice lines. Ma’ale Adumim, Ariel, Pisgat Ze’ev, Neve Yaakov, Giv’at Ze’ev, Efrat - and certainly places like Bet El, Hebron and scores of other communities - must be emptied of Jews.

But if Israel pushes back, the PLO can consider allowing a few Jews to stay as residents of Israel "to make Palestinians look more reasonable."

All of these are clearly non-starters for Israel. But the PLO is saying that it will not budge on this - hundreds of thousands of Jews must leave their homes before Israel can get any benefits of peace.

Delimitation and demarcation	· Delimitation on agreed and appropriately scaled maps.	· This is purely a technical issue. It should not be contentious.
Maritime Boundaries	· Palestine will claim full share of what we are entitled to under international law as a coastal state. · Maritime boundaries must be agreed, according to international law. · Include clause that says maritime boundaries will be agreed in the future [ideal time would be at or immediately post CAPS].	· Willing to negotiate shared/joint zones. · Maritime boundary does not have to be agreed at the FAPS or CAPS stage. It can be agreed post-statehood. · There are many options for the maritime boundaries in line with international law and equitability.
Private property	· Deal with private property interests in the swapped areas separately from delimitation of the border	·
Sovereignty and Inviolability	· West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip are one united and integral part of the territory of Palestine · Palestinian sovereignty must be full and respected by Israel	· NOTE: issues of sovereignty should not be confused with functional arrangements that suit both Palestinian and Israeli interests. For example, Palestine could enter into arrangements based on its sovereign equality on various issues in accordance with its own interests.

The next section we will look at contains the PLO demands about Jerusalem.

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