2011 Jan 25th: SPSC CONDEMNS PA AS COLLABORATORS
Tuesday 25th January 2011
Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign: Media Release
SCOTS PALESTINE GROUP CONDEMNS PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY AS "COLLABORATORS".
A Palestine campaign group says the publication by Al-Jazeera and the Guardian yesterday of the "Palestine Papers" confirms its view of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as "collaborators".
The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) says the "The PA is revealed completely capitulating to Israel and the US, willing to betray the aspirations of the Palestinian people."
Last year, the group's AGM had condemned the PA as "collaborators", and stated that its solidarity was with the "Palestinian people".
The leaked papers appear to demonstrate that PA negotiators had offered concession after concession to Israel, including the retention by Israel of all but one of its illegal settlements in Jerusalem, as well as huge swathes of the West Bank. Academic and author, Tariq Ali, described the PA as having "agreed to surrender virtually everything except their own salaries".
Ali continued, "The two-state solution is now dead and buried by Israel and the PLO. Impossible for anyone (even the BBC) to pretend that there can be an independent Palestinian state. A long crapulent depression is bound to envelop occupied Palestine, but whether Israel likes it or not there will one day be a single state in the region, probably by the end of this century. That is the only possible solution, apart from genocide."
The PA's chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, described the leaks as "a pack of Lies", however the Guardian said that the documents had been "independently authenticated" and "corroborated by former participants in the talks and intelligence and diplomatic sources", and had been cross-checked with many of the Wikileaks cables from US consulates.
Israel had blamed Palestinian intransigence for the breakdown in peace talks, while the papers suggest that, despite unprecedented concessions from the Palestinian side, the Israelis were the block to any deal.
SPSC chair, Mick Napier said "Israel calculates that its military power will ultimately allow it to take every square metre of Palestine, so it sees no need to concede anything to the indigenous population. "
Professor of Cultural Studies at Al Aqsa University in Gaza, and founder of the One Democratic State Group, Haider Eid, said, "The leaked papers only confirm what we have been saying all along. It is time for the PA to dismantle. The leadership of the PLO and the negotiating team lack legitimacy not unlike the chiefs of the infamous 'bantustans'."
Professor Eid will address a conference on Palestine this weekend in Edinburgh. Details can be found on the SPSC website: www.scottishpsc.org.uk
ENDS
Notes for editors:
1. The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign started in autumn 2000 in response to the Palestinian second uprising against Israeli occupation (Intifada). The SPSC has branches and groups of supporters in several Scottish towns, cities, and universities, as well as individual members across Scotland and elsewhere.
For further information, contact:
SPSC Chair, Mick Napier: 0131 620 0052; 07958002591
Email: media@scottishpsc.org.uk (default reply to this email)
Website: www.scottishpsc.org.uk
2. Background on the Palestine Papers:
2a. From the Guardian:
The revelations from the heart of the Israel-Palestine peace process are the product of the biggest documentary leak in the history of the Middle East conflict, and the most comprehensive exposure of the inside story of a decade of failed negotiations.
The 1,600 confidential records of hundreds of meetings between Palestinian, Israeli and US leaders, as well as emails and secret proposals, were leaked to the Qatar-based satellite TV channel al-Jazeera and shared exclusively with the Guardian. They cover the period from the runup to the ill-fated Camp David negotiations under US president Bill Clinton in 2000, to private discussions last year involving senior officials and politicians in the Obama administration. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/story-behind-leaked-palestine-papers )
2b. From Al-Jazeera:
There are 1,684 total documents, including:
275 sets of meeting minutes;
690 internal e-mails;
153 reports and studies;
134 sets of talking points and prep notes for meetings;
64 draft agreements;
54 maps, charts and graphs;
and 51 "non-papers."
(http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/2011123114726552723.html)
3. SPSC's November 2010 AGM motion referring to the PA as "collaborators" can be found here:
http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3574:the-palestine-papers&catid=257&Itemid=200079#agm2010
4. Tariq Ali is quoted from the London Review of Books:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/01/24/tariq-ali/total-capitulation
5. The SPSC Conference is entitled: "Palestine in the Context of the Drive to Permanent War"
The Conference takes place on Sat/Sun 29th/30th Jan 2011 at:
St George's West Church,
58 Shandwick Place
Edinburgh
EH2 4RT
Speakers include:
Dr Haider Eid, a founding member of the One Democratic State Group, has just left Gaza to deliver the keynote speech at the Conference on Saturday morning in Edinburgh. He will analyse the bewilderingly rapid developments across the Middle East and how popular movements are the best – the only – defense against the incessant wars that the US and Israel have in store for the region.
Mohamed Ali, a Tunisian oppositionist who was forced to flee the ex-dictatorship, will discuss how Tunisia's current popular uprising could spread across the region.
Mike Prysner was a soldier in the US army of occupation in Iraq. Mike's searing testimony is known to many. He will draw on lessons of past popular movements against war to suggest a way out of our seemingly permanent war drive.
Haifa Zangana, Iraqi author, weekly columnist for al Quds newspaper, writing occasionally in the Guardian and al-Ahram weekly, and activist, co-founder of Women's Solidarity for Indepedent and Unified Iraq.
Mohamad Asif, Scottish Afghan Society, will analyse the basis for the growing and spreading Afghan resistance to occupation.
Full programme here: