Israel and its supporters have typically described members of the Palestinian leadership as unreliable peace partners, saying they rarely make meaningful concessions. But the portrait emerging from the Al Jazeera documents is one of a string of concessions from the Palestinian side that led nowhere and an increasingly frustrated and desperate Abbas. That frustration extends to the US.
“Nineteen years of promises and you haven't made up your minds what you want to do with us,” Abbas reportedly told Mitchell in 2009. “We delivered on our road map obligations. Even Yuval Diskin raises his hat on security. But no, they can't even give a six-month freeze to give me a figleaf." Mr. Diskin is the head of Israel’s internal security agency and the “six-month freeze” refers to the moratorium on East Jerusalem settlement construction that Abbas sought.
On the Palestinian side now, the official leadership is one committed to a peace process with hard compromises. Abbas has renounced violence and has a few arrows left in his quiver. On the Israeli side, hardline politicians are on the rise. Israel’s right-wing Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman responded to the Palestinian Papers by saying a plan he recently put forth is the only option: the creation of a temporary Palestinian state on just 50 percent of the West Bank.
