The Palestine Papers 7: PA nullifying Israeli war crimes in Gaza: PA defers Goldstone's Report

PA complicitly attempts to defer release of Goldstone's Report of Israel's assault on Gaza

Palestinian Authority leaders co-operated with US officials in a bid to postpone the reference of the Goldstone report into war crimes in Gaza to the UN security council, leaked papers reveal. The PA, who have denied they made the decision under US pressure, later reversed their decision.

The postponement of the report into Israel's 2008 assault on Gaza triggered heavy criticism of the PA leadership, at one time threatening Abbas's position. But at a meeting on 21 October 2009, three weeks after the Goldstone scandal erupted, US national security adviser Jim Jones told the Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat: "Thank you for what you did a couple of weeks ago [on Goldstone]; it was very courageous".

On the day the reference of the report was delayed, US officials presented Palestinian negotiators with a "non paper" [a proposal that is off the record in diplomatic terms] committing the PA to "help promote a positive atmosphere conducive to negotiations ... [and] refrain from pursuing or supporting any initiative directly or indirectly in international legal forums that would undermine that atmosphere".

Erekat's response was to tell Mitchell: "On going to the UN we will always co-ordinate with you."

The papers also reveal new evidence of contact between Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, the Palestinian president, and Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli defence ministry official and senior negotiator, before the the launch of Israel's assault in late 2008.

Abbas issued a forceful denial late last year when US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks were quoted as reporting that in June 2009 Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, told a US congressional delegation that Israel "had consulted with Egypt and Fatah prior to Operation Cast Lead, asking if they were willing to assume control of Gaza once Israel defeated Hamas." Barak continued: "Not surprisingly...Israel received negative answers from both."

The Palestine Papers also record how Gilad and Tzipi Livni, then Israeli foreign minister, had spoken to Palestinian negotiators of the likelihood of a fullscale confrontation over Gaza. "We are on a collision course with Hamas," Gilad warned them. "You need to be prepared.. Sooner or later they [Hamas] will be taken care of."

At a meeting, Senator Mitchell presented Erekat with a document containing language that, if agreed to, would nullify one of the PA’s few weapons – the chance to prosecute Israeli officials for war crimes in Gaza at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. The U.S. language stated:

“The PA will help to promote a positive atmosphere conducive to negotiations; in particular during negotiations it will refrain from pursuing or supporting any initiative directly or indirectly in international legal forums that would undermine that atmosphere.”

Erekat, Abbas and the Palestinian Authority accepted the language and simultaneously agreed to call for a deferral of the UNHRC vote. Unsurprisingly, this decision was met by outrage, as Palestinians and Arab nations condemned the PA leadership for kowtowing yet again to American and Israeli pressure.

Israel leaked the PA’s support for the resolution deferral on the day before the UNHRC vote was to take place. Erekat, undoubtedly caught off-guard, was outspoken in his complaints weeks later to the U.S. on what he perceived as unfair Israeli tactics. In a meeting with U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones on October 21, 2009, Erekat revealed:

“Then came Goldstone and all hell broke loose. You know the first public response to the Goldstone thing came from Lieberman, who said Abu Mazen agreed to postpone the vote because the Israelis threatened to release the “tapes” showing him coordinating the attack on Gaza with Israel. Then there was the report that he did it for Wataniya, which they said is owned by his two sons.”

Jones, however, was quick to assure Erekat that the PA’s efforts would not go unnoticed. “And thank you for what you did a couple weeks ago,” Jones told Erekat. “It was very courageous.”

That same day, Erekat also met with Mitchell, and wasted no time in asking for the U.S. to deliver on its previous promises.

Erekat: When can you give me something, a document or a package, so I can take it to [Abu Mazen], so we can study it in good faith?

Mitchell: Much of what I read is not controversial...

For the United States, and unfortunately for the PA, it was simply business as usual.

The Palestine Papers 6: Future Palestinian State stripped bare and totally demilitarised

Livni to Palestinian negotiators: "You choose not to have the right of choice afterwards"

In a striking exchange from May 2008, Tzipi Livni, the then-Israeli foreign minister, tells Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat that he will have to accept an Israeli military presence in the West Bank. His objection is met with one of Livni’s more memorable dismissals:

Erekat: Do I have a choice of who to place on my territory?

Livni: No.

Erekat: I have a conceptual framework – short of your jet fighters in my sky and your army on my territory, can I choose where I secure external defence?

Livni: No. In order to create your state you have to agree in advance with Israel – you choose not to have the right of choice afterwards. These are the basic pillars.

So, in addition to pushing for a long-term presence in Palestine, Israeli negotiators also sought to rule out specific roles for the Palestinian security forces. On May 11, 2008, Ahmed Qurei, the former Palestinian prime minister, asks if the Palestinian state will have control over its airspace. Livni tells him that it will have to share control with Israel, and that “sometimes we will need to act in your airspace”.

Qurei: I want sovereignty over my airspace to be respected.

Livni: Dignity means freedom to choose – you need to put limitations according to your free will.

Israel also insists on creating “white” and “black” lists for those security forces – documents detailing which equipment and roles are approved or prohibited.

Qurei: So you want a list of what is not allowed – and all the rest is allowed?

Livni: No. We need a written formula and a list. First a “no” list, then a “yes” list. So what you don’t need (no army) and what you do need (maintaining law and order).

The Palestinian Authority largely accepts the premise of demilitarisation, though it does not endorse an Israeli presence in the West Bank. (In a February 2007 meeting with Marc Otte, the European Union envoy, Erekat suggests that NATO forces fill the third party role.)

A May 20, 2008 memo from the NSU – talking points for an upcoming security meeting with the Israelis – states bluntly that “Palestine will not require an army, assuming we agree to a third party role to take care of our defence needs”.

All of these demands, of course, are intended to ensure Israel’s security. Palestinian negotiators rarely ask about how they will secure their own state against external threats – and when Erekat did, in May 2008, he received what was perhaps an unencouraging response:

Erekat: So no army, no navy… fine. But what do I do if my security is at stake? What should I do?

Gilad: Consult.

(Jazeera)

The Palestine Papers 5: PA left without even a figleaf

Rice to PA: "Bad things happen to people all around the world all the time."

The overwhelming impression that emerges from the confidential records of a decade of Middle East peace talks is of the weakness and desperation of Palestinian leaders, the unyielding correctness of Israeli negotiators and the often contemptuous attitude towards the Palestinian side shown by US politicians and officials. It is a picture that graphically illustrates the gradual breakdown of a process now widely believed to have reached a dead end.

The documents reveal Palestinian Authority leaders often tipping over into making ingratiating appeals to their Israeli counterparts, as well as US leaders. "I would vote for you," the then senior Palestinian negotiator, Ahmed Qureia (also known as Abu Ala), told Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, during talks at the King David hotel in Jerusalem in June 2008, as she was preparing for elections in her Kadima party. "Given the choice", Livni shot back, "you don't have much of a dilemma."

Qureia's comment echoed earlier private remarks by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), to Ariel Sharon in a June 2005 meeting at the then Israeli prime minister's residence which would have caused outrage if they had been made known at the time. Having listened to Sharon berate him for failing to crack down on the "terrorist infrastructure" of Hamas and Islamic jihad, Abbas was recorded as noting "with pleasure the fact that Sharon considered him a friend, and the fact that he too considered Sharon a friend", adding that "every bullet that is aimed in the direction of Israel is a bullet aimed at the Palestinians as well".

In March 2008, the documents show that Qureia greeted the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, with the words: "You bring back life to the region when you come."

But as the 2007-08 Annapolis negotiations led nowhere and the government of Binyamin Netanyahu successfully resisted US pressure to halt settlement building in the occupied territories during 2009-10, Palestinian negotiators are shown adopting an increasingly injured and despairing tone with US officials, as they seek to demonstrate the scale of concessions they have made to no avail.

In an emotional – and apparently humiliating – outburst to Barack Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, in Washington in October 2009, the senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat complained that the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership wasn't even being offered a "figleaf".

He said: "Nineteen years of promises and you haven't made up your minds what you want to do with us ... We delivered on our road map obligations. Even Yuval Diskin [director of Israel's internal security service, Shabak] raises his hat on security. But no, they can't even give a six-month freeze to give me a figleaf."

All the US government was interested in, Erekat went on, was "PR, quick news, and we're cost free", ending up with the appeal: "What good am I if I'm the joke of my wife, if I'm so weak?"

A few months later, in January 2010, Erekat returned to a similar theme with the US state department official David Hale, saying he was offering Israel "the biggest Yerushalayim in Jewish history" (using the Hebrew name for Jerusalem), a "symbolic number of refugees' return, demilitarised state ... What more can I give?"

But as became clear even under the earlier, less hardline Israeli government of Ehud Olmert, the scale of concessions offered by Erekat and other Palestinian Authority negotiators – far beyond what the majority of the Palestinian public would be likely to accept – was insufficient for Israeli leaders.

During the most intensive recent negotiations, before and after George Bush's Annapolis conference, the documents show the Israelis conducting themselves in a businesslike manner. In an attempt to show her good faith, Livni is recorded confirming what Palestinians have always accused Israeli governments of doing: creating facts on the ground to prevent the possibility of a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

At a west Jerusalem meeting in November 2007, she told Qureia that she believed Palestinians saw settlement building as meaning "Israel takes more land [so] that the Palestinian state will be impossible"; that "the Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and that at the end of the day we'll say that is impossible, we already have the land and we cannot create the state". She conceded that it had been "the policy of the government for a really long time".

But when Palestinian leaders balked at the prospect of an entirely demilitarised state, Livni made clear where the negotiating power lay. In May 2008, Erekat asked Livni: "Short of your jet fighters in my sky and your army on my territory, can I choose where I secure external defence?"

"No," Livni replied. "In order to create your state you have to agree in advance with Israel – you choose not to have the right of choice afterwards."

By the following year, Erekat appeared to have accepted that choice. "The Palestinians know they will have a country with limitations," he told Mitchell. "They won't have an army, air force or navy." A string of other major concessions had been made, but the issues were no further forward. "They need decisions," Erekat pleaded.

Increasingly, PA leaders resorted to warning US officials that if they failed to deliver an agreement with Israel, the door would be opened to Hamas and Iran. In October 2009, Erekat told Mitchell: "In no time you will have Aziz Dweik as your partner," referring to the Hamas speaker of the Palestinian parliament, who constitutionally assumes the role of Palestinian president when the job is vacant.

PA leaders repeatedly threatened to abandon attempts to negotiate a two-state solution in favour of a one-state option. At the same meeting, Erekat declared that if the settlement of the West Bank continued, "we will announce the one state and the struggle for equality in the state of Israel".

But the documents show US officials unmoved by such claims. Why were the Palestinians "always in a chapter of a Greek tragedy", secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, asked at a meeting with Erekat in Washington in the autumn of 2009.

Her predecessor, Rice, had been even more dismissive. In July 2008 during talks with Palestinian leaders over compensation for refugees who fled or were forced from their homes when Israel was established in 1948, she said: "Bad things happen to people all around the world all the time."

If the Palestinians kept insisting that Israel could not keep the large settlements of Ma'ale Adumim (near Jerusalem) and Ariel (in the heart of the West Bank), Rice told them: "You won't have a state". No Israeli leader could accept a deal "without including them in an Israeli state".

As to the most neuralgic issue – Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount holy sites in Jerusalem – she declared: "If we wait until you decide sovereignty ... your children's children will not have an agreement."

The Palestine Papers 4: Terminating Hamas, PA's obsession

Livni to PA: “Our strategic view is to strengthen you and weaken Hamas.”

Erekat to US: "We control zakat and mosques"

For Fatah, the Annapolis process seems to have been as much about crushing Hamas as about ending Israel's occupation. Instead of focusing on resolving the core issues at hand, why did Palestinian negotiators spend so much time during the meetings denigrating their political rivals, Hamas? Fatah security forces routinely arrest members of Hamas in the West Bank.

The Palestine Papers reveal that Fatah was obsessed with maintaining political supremacy over Hamas, with Israel’s cooperation, especially following the 2006 electoral victory of the Islamist movement. The Palestinian Authority extensively cracked down on Hamas institutions to weaken the group and strengthen its own relationship with Israel.

At the height of negotiations, on April 7, 2008, Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni was unequivocal in summing up Israel’s policy: “Our strategic view is to strengthen you and weaken Hamas.”

Working with Israel to weaken Hamas also appeared to be in the Palestinian Authority’s interest. During a May 6, 2008 security meeting between Yoav Mordechai, the head of the Israeli army civil administration in the West Bank, and Hazem Atallah, the head of the Palestinian Civil Police, Hamas was a prominent subject of discussion.

Yoav Mordechai: How is your fight against “civilian” Hamas: the officers, people in municipalities, etc. This is a serious threat.

Hazem Atallah: I don’t work at the political level, but I agree we need to deal with this.

Yoav Mordechai: Hamas needs to be declared illegal by your President. So far it is only the militants that are illegal.

Atallah: There is also the request for tear gas canisters. You previously gave us these back in 96.”

Yoav Mordechai: We gave some to you for Balata 2 weeks ago. What do you need them for?

Atallah: Riot control. We want to avoid a situation where the security agencies may be forced to fire on unarmed civilians.

PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat made his contempt for his rivals known in 2007, when he told the Belgian foreign minister Karel de Gucht, “I can’t stand Hamas or their social programs.”

By September 17, 2009, Erekat was bragging to U.S. officials that the PA had complete control over “zakat” committees, or Muslim charities, in the West Bank, as well as the weekly Friday sermons. Palestinian officials were often more concerned with applying pressure to Hamas than easing a humanitarian crisis. PA began controlling the mosques.

“We have invested time and effort and even killed our own people to maintain order and the rule of law,” Erekat said. “The Prime Minister is doing everything possible to build the institutions. We are not a country yet but we are the only ones in the Arab world who control the Zakat and the sermons in the mosques. We are getting our act together.”

In 2007, Fatah was “increasing pressure on ‘zakat’ charity committees that support the network of Islamic schools and health clinics which helped fuel Hamas's rise to power.” On one occasion, Reuters reported, 20 gunmen stormed a dairy funded by such a zakat committee.

On February 11, 2008, Atallah presented the Israelis with a laundry list of actions the PA took against Hamas. “We made arrests, confiscated arms, and sacked security individuals affiliated with Hamas,” Atallah said, “but you keep on deterring our efforts, and this is what’s happening in Nablus.”

While security cooperation against Hamas and its institutions dominated some meetings, often Palestinian negotiators merely wanted to vent to their Israeli counterparts about their deep-seated desire to defeat their political opponents.

“Hamas must not feel that it is achieving daily victories, sometimes with Israel and sometimes with Egypt, and Al Jazeera Channel praises these victories,” Ahmed Qurei, a senior Palestinian negotiator, told Livni on February 4, 2008.

“I hope Hamas will be defeated.”

According to the Palestine Papers, for Fatah, the Annapolis process seems to have been as much about crushing Hamas as it was about ending Israel’s occupation and establishing an independent, Palestinian state.

“We continue with a genuine process,” Saeb Erekat confided to European Union Special Representative Marc Otte on June 18, 2008, “reaching an agreement is a matter of survival for us. It’s the way to defeat Hamas.”.

excerpts from Al Jazeera

The Palestine Papers 3: PA Colluding to Strangle Gaza

Qurei to Israel: "Occupy the crossing"

On January 23, 2008, masked gunmen demolished the steel wall alongside the Philadelphi route in Rafah and hundreds of thousands Gazans entered Egypt to buy food and supplies. Less than two weeks later, in a meeting in West Jerusalem, Ahmed Qurei, the former Palestinian Authority prime minister, asked Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister, if Israel could re-occupy the Philadephi corridor to seal the border and cut off supplies to Hamas.

Livni: We’ll not give legitimacy to Hamas and we’ll stop the smuggling of money and arms from Egypt. Did the opening of the borders appear to be a victory of Hamas?”

Qurei: Yes, they appeared to have ended the siege.

Livni: The Egyptians don’t do enough, and we’re sure they can do much more.

Qurei: What can you do about the Philadelphi Crossing?

Livni: We’re not there.

Qurei: You’ve re-occupied the West Bank, and you can occupy the crossing if you want.

Livni: We can re-occupy the Gaza Strip. What is your position?

Qurei to Israel: "Occupy the crossing"

Later that month, during another meeting on the issue of security, Livni seemed willing to retake control of the corridor after Israel and the PA would reach a peace agreement.

Livni: Regarding Philadelphi, whether or not it was a mistake to leave it. If indeed it was a mistake, since Egypt is not effective like Jordan, can our agreement provide for Israeli presence in Philadelphi?

Qurei: Palestine will be independent but can co-ordinate. Agreement should reflect that with a commitment to security. Therefore regarding parameters I believe security is part of regional vision. Other neighbours don't have a problem -- regional security is interconnected.

Even before the takeover in 2007, the PA was desperately trying to keep control over the Gaza Strip by pleading for more weapons from the US, as is reflected in a meeting between Saeb Erekat, the chief PA negotiator, and Keith Dayton, the then-US security co-ordinator for Israel and the PA in May 2006:

Erekat: The PG [Presidential Guard] is in dire need of guns and ammunition. Particularly with the situation in Gaza, this issue is critical. [Keith Dayton replied that he will raise this point with Israelis particularly in meeting with Ephraim, (Israeli deputy defence minister) tomorrow]. "We need to re-establish security liaison with Israel. This is the best way to maintain security."

After the Hamas takeover in 2007, the fighting capabilities of Hamas and other resistance forces in the West Bank were crushed. The PA then started to crack down on the civilian infrastructure of the movement, as is shown in a meeting between Yoav Mordechai, the the head of the Civil Administration in the Occupied Territories, and Hazem Atallah, the PA police chief in the West Bank, in May 2008 in Tel Aviv.

In one of the most candid examples of the PA’s bid to tighten the noose around the Gaza Strip in order to punish Hamas, Erekat shows his disagreements with Israel and Egypt on their Gaza policy. In a meeting with George Mitchell, the US Middle East envoy in October 2009, Erekat appears frustrated that not enough was being done to maintain the siege on Gaza:

Erekat: Senator, I am just briefing you on my meetings with the Israelis. I am not giving you a message. They were good meetings. I told Amos Gilad [Israel’s chief negotiator]: you are Egypt’s man. You know the Egyptians. 11km! [Referring to the length of the border with Gaza]. What’s going on with you and the US, the $23 million [given by the US Agency for International Development to prevent tunnels] and ditches - its business as usual in the tunnels - the Hamas economy...Amos Gilad started laughing!

Mitchell: What did he say?

Erekat: They don’t want to say anything negative about Egypt. It’s their strategic relation with them. But they make me pay the price. I am no longer there. I am not alone responsible for the coup d’etat in Gaza

(al Jazeera & Guardian sources)

The Palestine Papers 2: PA surrendering everything and getting nothing

The papers reveal the extreme extent of what Palestinian Authority leadership was willing to surrender in order to please ever intransigent, overbearing, domineering and confident Isreali negotiators. They capitulated, gave up on everything, selling out the whole of Jerusalem (biggest Yerushalayim for Israel), relinquishing Palestinian right of return in accepting only a small token number of refugee return, recognising Israel as a fully Jewish State implying Zionism and accepting unconditionally a future state predetermined derisively (in future) by Israel itself. In typical sardonic Israeli response, these were deemed not enough, rejected disdainfully and the PA was left at a lurch, bargaining away all its chips dirt cheap.

Among the shameful episodes:- when PA purposely delayed release of Goldstone Report of Israeli atrocities in its Gaza onslaught as urged by the Israelis and the US citing not to hamper negotiations. PA also knew in advance of Israeli plans to attack Gaza. The excerpts:-

The papers indicate that the PA was warned in advance of and complicit in the 2008-2009 Israeli invasion of Gaza that claimed the lives of over 1,400 Palestinians. In addition, transcripts recount several discussions in which PA negotiators urged the Israelis to tighten their siege of the Gaza strip that has subjected a million-and-a-half Palestinians to hunger and misery. (WSWS)

By offering or at least indicating that it was prepared to offer such huge concessions, the PA leadership encouraged Israel’s political and military leaders in their belief that if only they are intransigent, repressive and brutal enough for long enough, they can break the will of the Palestinians to continue their struggle and force them to accept a handful of crumbs from Zionism’s table. (Alan Hart, ICH)

The documents – many of which will be published by the Guardian and Al Jazeera – also reveal:

They outline major concessions Palestinians offered during talks, which were rejected by Israel. They include:

• · a formal offer to allow Israel to annex all but one of the Jewish settlements built in occupied East Jerusalem
• 
  
• · an international committee to take over Jerusalem's Temple Mount, which houses the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque - Islam's third holiest site
• 
  
• · limiting the number of Palestinian refugees returning to 100,000 over a span of 10 years

• 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.

The Palestine Papers - PA killing our own people

The Palestine Papers starkly revealed by Al Jazeera shows the Palestinian Authority under Mahmud Abbas as amil, as jasus for the Israelis, quislings, collaborators and spies in the service of the colonising Zionist State. What is more shocking is that among Palestinians suffering in occupation, PA treachery and connivance is well known. These documents only confirm the depths of brutal corruption of Abu Mazen's cabal and the Quartet's inhuman experiment in maintaining systematic apartheid by deceit and betrayal. Below are excerpts: -

The al-Madhoun Assassination

Documents include handwritten notes of 2005 exchange between PA and Israel on plan to kill Palestinian fighter in Gaza, By David Poort, January 25, 2011 "Al- Jazeera" - -

Al-Madhoun (born 1973) was a leading figure within the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, a movement aligned to Fatah, which at that stage still held power in Gaza. In a joint committee meeting on fugitives in mid-2005 in Tel Aviv between Shaul Mofaz, the then-Israeli defence minister, and Nasser Youssef, the PA minister of interior, the PA was asked to kill al-Madhoun.

Mofaz: “[…] Hassan Madhoun, we know his address and Rasheed Abu Shabak [chief of the Preventative Security Organisation in Gaza] knows that. Why don't you kill him? Hamas fired [Qassam rockets] because of the elections and this is a challenge to you and a warning to Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president].”

Youssef: “We gave instructions to Rasheed [Abu Shabak] and will see.”

Mofaz: “Since we spoke, he has been planning an operation, and that's four weeks ago, and we know that he wants to strike Qarni or Erez [another border crossing between Gaza and Israel]. He is not Hamas and you can kill him.”

Youssef: “We work, the country is not easy, our capabilities are limited, and you haven't offered anything.”

Mofaz: “I understand that nothing has been accomplished in the [Gaza] Strip.”

Less then a month after this meeting, on November 1, 2005, al-Madhoun was killed in his car by a missile fired from an Israeli Apache helicopter over the skies of Gaza. The attack also killed a wanted Hamas activist and wounded three other people.

The very next day, Mofaz, who by that time was in Washington said, "We want to deal with President Abbas," after meeting with Condoleezza Rice, the then-US Secretary of State, before going to the White House to confer with Stephen Hadley, the then-national security adviser.

"We are waiting to see how the Palestinian Authority will deal with terrorist groups," the Israeli minister said.

Saeb Erekat, the PA’s chief negotiator acknowledged the cost of gaining US approval and Israeli trust, in a meeting on September 17, 2009 with David Hale, the deputy US Middle East envoy.

Erekat: "We have had to kill Palestinians to establish one authority, one gun and the rule of law. We continue to perform our obligations. We have invested time and effort and killed our own people to maintain order and the rule of law."

“Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade is part of the Fatah movement and they agreed to be part of the current security apparatus, even though this was not my position when I was a prime minister. I wanted the Brigade to remain as it was to confront Hamas,” Qurei told Livni.

“[…] reaching an agreement is a matter of survival for us. It’s the way to defeat Hamas,” Erekat told Marc Otte, the EU negotiator, in June 2008.

Earlier that year, on January 22, Qurei told Livni; “We’ll defeat Hamas if we reach an agreement, and this will be our response to their claim that gaining back our land can be achieved through resistance only.”