Leaked documents detailing peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians deliberately confuse the positions of either side, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said today.
The documents, obtained by al Jazeera television channel shared with the Guardian newspaper, indicate that Palestinian negotiators offered Israel much bigger concessions than previously revealed.
"What is intended is a mix-up. I have seen them yesterday present things as Palestinian but they were Israeli...This is therefore intentional," Mr Abbas said in Cairo. He said the peace talks were carried out in an open manner.
Other Palestinian officials moved quickly to question the veracity of the leaked documents. The chief Palestinian negotiator in the 2008 talks, Ahmed Qureia, said “many parts of the documents were fabricated, as part of the incitement against the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian leadership.”
He denied making an offer about the Jewish enclaves in east Jerusalem, saying Israel refused to discuss the issue.
The current chief negotiator Saeb Erekat dismissed the report as “lies and half truths”.
As well as the annexation of all East Jerusalem settlements except Har Homa, the Palestinian papers show PLO leaders privately suggested swapping part of the flashpoint East Jerusalem Arab neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah for land elsewhere.
Most controversially, they also proposed a joint committee to take over the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount holy sites in Jerusalem’s old city – the thorny issue that helped sink the Camp David talks in 2000 after Yasser Arafat refused to concede sovereignty around the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques.
The offers were made in 2008-2009, in the wake of US 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.
Agencies