Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh, an excellent Arab Muslim reporter who lives in Jerusalem, is describing the damage done to the Palestinian Authority’s image and reputation by Al-Jazeera’s “Palestine Papers” as “colossal and irreparable.”

After assuming the role of prosecutor and judge, Al- Jazeera, the Arab world’s most influential TV network, has ruled that the leaders of the Palestinian Authority have betrayed their people and must therefore step down from the stage.

The “defendants” have been found guilty of ceding control over most of east Jerusalem to Israel, relinquishing the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees and conducting security coordination with Israeli security authorities.

In other words, PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his men have been convicted of high treason – which, in the Arab and Islamic world, is a crime punishable by death.

Al-Jazeera is now waiting for the executioner (the Palestinians, in this case) to carry out the death sentence.

Al-Jazeera’s dramatic show trial, which began on Sunday night, has undoubtedly caused massive damage to the PA leadership in the West Bank. The blow is so severe that it’s hard to see how the PA leadership can ever recover.

Al-Jazeera’s show trial could bring down PA leadership

The Palestinian Authority has taken turns denying the validity of the papers, claiming they were just being sarcastic to Israeli negotiators in some of their most damaging quotes during the negotiations, and accusing Al-Jazeera as declaring war on the “Palestinians.”

Hopelessly delusional liberals and other sad westerners who still see no difference between the democratic western Israel and the PLO terror leaders who pretend to understand words like “compromise” and “negotiate” – these delusional people see hope in these papers because it sounds to them as if the “Palestinian” negotiators could have been persuaded to sign a peace deal that Israel could have accepted.

It’s not true, of course. In the middle of claiming that they would be more lenient in their “right of return” demands and in demands about many of eastern Jerusalem’s Jewish neighborhoods, they were also setting impossible conditions that could never be filled by Israel’s leaders (not any of Israel’s leaders).

The “Palestinians” made non-negotiable non-starter demands about acquiring Ma’aleh Adumim in particular. They said that they couldn’t make a peace deal without getting Ma’aleh Adumim as part of the deal. Ma’aleh Adumim is a city of 35,000 Israelis built at the top of Judean Hills between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. The “Palestinians” treat Ma’aleh Adumim as a path from north Samaria to southern Judea, but it’s a community with only one road that rises up onto the hills to one city entrance. It’s not a path to anywhere except to Ma’aleh Adumim.

When the “Palestinians” insisted that they couldn’t make a deal without Ma’aleh Adumim, Condi Rice is quoted as saying, “You won’t have a state.”

Tzipi Livni was sober and blunt with the “Palestinians” at times, as this exchange about Ma’aleh Adumim shows:

Qurei: “I don’t mind if Israelis become Palestinian citizens. Let them stay.”

Livni: “You know this is not realistic. They will kill them the next day.”

Overall, Tzipi Livni did make suggestions that wouldn’t be accepted by the majority of Israelis, however, and she did not come close to making a peace agreement with the “Palestinian” negotiators (regardless of her claims that she came close enough to close the deal in the future if she’s given the chance again).

The Palestinian Authority is desperately trying to defend its leaders from “The Palestine Papers” while Israel’s left wing is saying very little. It’s hard to spin to Israel’s public that everything would have been ok in the talks eventually although the Palestinian Authority was dead set on acquiring a city (Ma’aleh Adumim) that NO sober Israeli leader would ever agree to hand over.

The Israeli public had no idea until now that Ma’aleh Adumim was being discussed as a Palestinian Authority demand in these talks. It’s another Arab non-starter demand (one of many).

These papers are a game changer and they’re way too difficult for President Obama to circumvent in his desire to be the one U.S. President that can solve the unsolvable Arab-Israeli conflict.

Obama’s hubris and his view of himself as an anti-Bush messiah have led his Middle East foreign policies to ruin. It’s interesting to see how far his devotees’ hopes have fallen in the last two years:

Will Obama Solve the Middle East — All at Once?
Huffington Post
May 13, 2009

There are immense and tectonic shifts underway on the Arab/Israel dispute. Nothing is confirmed, but the signs are growing of a new US policy that is remarkable in its scale and ambition: nothing less than a comprehensive solution to all “tracks” (as they have hitherto been known) of the peace process. In other words, the administration may, at a stroke, be seeking to solve all aspects of the many-faceted problem of Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbors: that means Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria, all at once.

One straw in the wind is a remarkably candid interview by King Abdullah of Jordan given to Richard Beeston of The Times (of London) on May 11, in which the King suggests just that – that the US is aiming not for piecemeal progress separately with the Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians etc, but at a “global solution” – or, in his words, not a 2-state solution (ie a state for Israel and the Palestinians) but a 57-state solution – ie all the Arab states, and others, who today do not recognise Israel, at last recognising and accepting Israel’s existence.

Then, Mahmoud Abbas bragged to the Washington Post that he had nothing to do except wait for President Obama to bring Netanyahu’s government down.

Abbas’s Waiting Game
By Jackson Diehl
Friday, May 29, 2009

Mahmoud Abbas says there is nothing for him to do.

…Abbas and his team fully expect that Netanyahu will never agree to the full settlement freeze — if he did, his center-right coalition would almost certainly collapse. So they plan to sit back and watch while U.S. pressure slowly squeezes the Israeli prime minister from office. “It will take a couple of years,” one official breezily predicted. Abbas rejects the notion that he should make any comparable concession — such as recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, which would imply renunciation of any large-scale resettlement of refugees.

Instead, he says, he will remain passive. “I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements,” he said. “Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life.” In the Obama administration, so far, it’s easy being Palestinian.

Later, of course, Obama famously snubbed Netanyahu in the White House by going to dinner and leaving Israel’s Prime Minister to fend for himself (along with his aides and no dinner) in a room until Obama returned after eating.

Netanyahu’s partial construction freeze in Judea and Samaria expired last September and the Palestinian Authority stepped up to talk at the last minute so that Obama could demand that the freeze be expanded and extended (and extended and extended permanently) to create a final permanent building freeze for Israel in Judea, Samaria and in eastern, southern and northern Jerusalem’s Jewish neighborhoods.

Obama and Hillary demanded a 90 day freeze extension, but they weren’t willing to put promises in writing about how they would reward Israel (and they also knew that Mahmoud Abbas wouldn’t talk to Israel until the 89th day so that he could ask for another extension). So Obama’s foreign policy froze instead of Israeli construction.

Another game changer occurred recently when Ehud Barak left the Labor Party so that Netanyahu’s government would no longer live under the constant threat of the Labor Party quitting the coalition and possibly bringing on early elections in Israel.

One thing is for sure: It was all about Barak. It was, from his point of view, a brilliant move designed to call the bluff of the Labor ministers and MKs, including Isaac Herzog, Avishay Braverman and Shelly Yacimovich, who constantly threatened to quit if the party did not pull out of the coalition, and it means that Barak can keep the Defense portfolio he adores.

All the media mentioned that the maneuver, planned secretly, recalled the glory days of Barak and Netanyahu in the early 1970s, when Barak was the commanding officer of the elite General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (Sayeret Matkal) in which all three Netanyahu brothers served.

NO LESS predictably, Kadima leader Tzipi Livni decried not only the move – which weakens her chances of entering the coalition or expediting the next elections – but also the “IDF old boys” analogy with which she can never compete (and instead of shrilly complaining about it, she would do better to stress her own valuable assets as soon as her advisers help her find them).

My Word: Bye-bye Barak? So long, Labor?

In recent weeks, the Palestinian Authority has also started imploring nations in various parts of the world to recognize “Palestine” as a state with borders along the 1967 ceasefire lines and eastern Jerusalem as their capital. The Palestinian Authority also decided to take the issue of condemning Israel’s “settlements” to the UN Security Council in the hope that President Obama wouldn’t veto the resolution.

It’s been reported in recent days that President Obama may decide to veto the resolution since Americans were quite noticeably refusing to work with the “Palestinians” on the language of the resolution (which is often a good sign that America may be planning on a veto).

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post wrote on January 20th that Obama would indeed veto the resolution:

What will Obama do at the U.N.?

NOW, the Palestinian Authority is a desperate bunch under attack by Al-Jazeera (Qatar) with roughly 1700 documents that Al-Jazeera seems to regard as a case damning enough to bring the Palestinian Authority down.

No wonder President Obama didn’t bring up the Middle East Peace Process in his State of the Union address last night.