Ed Webb's List: MEPP_leaks

• The scale of confidential concessions offered by Palestinian negotiators, including on the highly sensitive issue of the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

  • How Israeli leaders privately asked for some Arab citizens to be transferred to a new Palestinian state.

  • The intimate level of covert co-operation between Israeli security forces and the Palestinian Authority.

  • The central role of British intelligence in drawing up a secret plan to crush Hamas in the Palestinian territories.

  • How Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders were privately tipped off about Israel's 2008-9 war in Gaza.

  As well as the annexation of all East Jerusalem settlements except Har Homa, the Palestine papers show PLO leaders privately suggested swapping part of the flashpoint East Jerusalem Arab neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah for land elsewhere.
• The offers were made in 2008-9, in the wake of President George Bush's Annapolis conference, and were privately hailed by the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, as giving Israel "the biggest Yerushalayim [the Hebrew name for Jerusalem] in history" in order to resolve the world's most intractable conflict. Israeli leaders, backed by the US government, said the offers were inadequate

  • Astonishing. If this is inadequate, what do they want?
• the unyielding confidence of Israeli negotiators and the often dismissive attitude of US politicians towards Palestinian representatives

1 more annotation...

• Secrecy was likewise vital after World War I. After a series of debilitating leaks, the leaders of the four primary victors — Britain, France, Italy and the United States — abandoned their policy of open diplomacy and went into closed sessions. Only then were they able to navigate the difficult details of the Treaty of Versailles and reach a final, if relatively short-lived, peace.