Jewish settlements not as controversial as some think, documents reveal

More than 1,600 leaked documents detailing dialogue between Palestinian and Israeli officials from 1999 through 2010 have shaken up the Israeli/Palestinian peace process.

According to the documents, as late as 2008 Palestinian negotiators understood that a peace deal with Israel would mean that most of the settlements in East Jerusalem, comprising over 200,000 Jews, would remain under Israeli sovereignty. As Haaretz.com reports, “the Palestinians offered to let Israel keep all but one of the Jewish enclaves it built in East Jerusalem after capturing it in the 1967 Mideast war.”

This means Palestinian leaders were actually prepared to negotiate a peace deal with Israel where they would allow most Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem to be part of the Israeli state, instead of being in “occupied territory.”

This revelation could not have come at a worse time for the Palestinian Authority (PA), since the very reason it now says it will not return to the negotiating table with Israel is because of Jewish construction in areas which would occupy land in a future Palestinian state.

Furthermore, the documents are an embarrassment to the Obama administration, as it has repeatedly made an Israeli construction freeze the hallmark to its brokering of peace in the Middle East.

Not surprisingly, the Palestinian leadership denied the veracity of the documents. Chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat labeled them a “bunch of lies.”