Suicidal Tactic

Having read as much about the PalPapers as I can stomach, the only thing I can be sure of is that instead of trying to opine sagely over the authenticity or the significance of the revelations, I should merely be asking why did the BBC pick up and run with the most unlikely conclusion.

We know all about the Guardian’s pathological hatred of Israel. We’ve seen that Israel-bashing enthuses readers. There was a time when slapping a picture of Princess Diana on the cover would boost the circulation of any flagging old rag. In a similar way the Guardian exploits Israel-related topics as a fail-safe remedy for dwindling sales and advertising. They needn’t even stick with purely anti Israel material, because their well trained readership will soon fill the below the line comments with vitriolic regurgitations of the in-house philosophy gleaned from the wisdoms of Seaumas Milne.

But the BBC? They’ve got their charter obligations. They think, probably correctly, that the majority of their audience will be bored by the nitty gritty of the peace process. Few will bother to read Robin Shepherd, Melanie Phillips, Barry Rubin, Noah Pollak, Emanuele Ottolnghi, Stephen Pollard or the blogs of Elder of Ziyon and CiFWatch, so they will swallow the face value version – the perversion; that the Palestinians were offering everything for peace, and the Israelis nothing.

The theories on the authenticity and significance of the leaks are many and varied. Some feel that they are so out of kilter with the known positions of all parties that they must surely be fabrications, some suspect that the translations somehow transposed the Israeli and Palestinian statements, attributing Israel’s concessions to Erekat, on behalf of the Palestinians. Elder of Ziyon has shown that an unlikely statement allegedly made by Tzipi Livni was lifted completely out of context and given a whole new meaning. But everyone agrees that the negotiations in question touched on settlements, land swaps, compensation, and borders as well as security and the ‘right of return.’

The material I’ve read tells me loud and clear that the BBC’s and the Guardian’s spin is outrageously misguided. One thing is sure. Making the settlement freeze a prerequisite for talks was a huge blunder by President Obama. He forced himself into a corner, backtracking on what had already been all but agreed, which made him, and his fans at the BBC/ Guardian ‘more Palestinian than the Palestinians.’

But the most important thing about all this is that, as Elder says, whatever Mahmoud Abbas and Saeb Erekat said or did not say in their role as ‘partners for peace’, they cannot sell anything less than everything-under-the-sun to their people. Like Nick Clegg making undeliverable promises to his voters, then being unexpectedly elevated to a position of accountability, the PA have promised the earth to people who now won’t accept anything less.
And the verdict is that the leaks have harmed the peace process, given false ammunition to opponents of the only democracy in the Middle East, and boosted the left’s suicidal support of the Islamist upsurge throughout the whole world.