Yesterday Yasser Abed-Rabbo and Saeb Erekat, senior PLO leaders, attacked al-Jazeera, which obtained the Palestine papers, for distortions and fraud, and questioned the political motives of its Qatari owners. A demonstration in Ramallah burned an al-Jazeera logo. This leak originated in the Palestinian Authority's own institutions, and al-Jazeera is a rarity in the Arab world. It was praised for its coverage of the invasion of Iraq by the very people who attack it today. It should be defended by all who want democracy in the Arab world.
Rather than attack the messenger, people should see the Palestine papers as a chance to put the search for a durable two-state solution back on track. Let there be no doubt. A two-state solution remains the only show in town. It is still achievable despite the agony of these revelations and the conflicts of the last two decades. But such a deal requires both sides to make difficult concessions; in other conflicts we always praise those who do so. Such deals, however, rely on popular consent. The belief that has grown up in the dying days of these negotiations that the Palestinian public might not like a deal, but they will be forced to live with it, runs counter to all of the experience of conflict resolution. This is why Palestinian negotiators should speak for the widest possible spectrum of Palestinian opinion. And this is also why the search for a two-state solution should now be retooled.
The extent to which the PLO reacted with fury against the publication of their own words – and there can be no doubt that these were their words and documents – is not just a measure of the sensitivity of the issues. It is also a measure of the gap that has opened up between them and their own people. This is perilous to the prospects of any agreement. A Palestinian state built on, or as close as possible to, the 1967 borders offers the best chance of ending the conflict. The mere prospect of achieving such a state within a year should be enough to secure a ceasefire with all the rejectionist militant Palestinian groups. But it is not going to happen if even the liberal wing of Israeli opinion, represented in these papers by former prime minister Ehud Olmert and foreign minister Tzipi Livni, insists on retaining all of the major settlement blocks. It will not happen if, as Ms Livni said in a recent interview, she could not countenance the return of even one Palestinian refugee to Israel. Put simply, if the Palestinians have to make difficult concessions, so do the Israelis.
As it is, the private offer that Palestinian negotiators made to Israel of a "symbolic" return of 10,000 refugees – out of 5 million this would be symbolic indeed – would be a tough sell among refugees who have spent their lives in the camps in Beirut. It is the constituency that the PLO still claim to represent, and it was a long-standing PLO pledge that no deal would be brokered over their heads. It emerges that that was exactly what the PA team had in mind. On this issue, Israel's negotiators lost their cohesion. It is one thing to argue that the full implementation of the Palestinian right of return is incompatible with the existence of a democratic state in which there is a Jewish majority. It is quite another to say that that means not one Palestinian – or his family – who fled or was expelled in 1948 can return to his birthplace. Mr Olmert himself was pragmatic, but would only say that he offered Abbas a figure which was less than 25,000.
It is often said that talks succeed only when each side can put itself in the shoes of the other. To imagine that Abu Mazen could put to a referendum a deal in which Israel got its way on all the core issues – settlements, Jerusalem, the return of refugees – and to imagine that such a deal would be durable, is the ultimate failure of a negotiator's imagination. To say how and where this deal fell short, is not to undermine the goal. It is the only way left of rescuing it.
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