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Scoop Link: The Palestine Papers Day 1
Scoop Link: The Palestine Papers Day 1
(23
January
2011)
Palestine Papers: Erekat's solution for the Haram
The PA's chief negotiator suggested unprecedented compromises on the division of Jerusalem and its holy sites.
Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator of the Palestinian Authority (PA), had suggested unprecedented compromises on the division of Jerusalem and its holy sites, the Palestine Papers obtained by Al Jazeera show.
Minutes of negotiations at the US State Department in Washington DC indicate that Erekat was willing to concede control over the Haram al-Sharif, or Temple Mount, to the oversight of an international committee.
"The chief Palestinian negotiator appeared totally disconnected from his own people, as well as his wider Arab and Muslim constituency, when he made this 'creative' overture about Old City and the Haram."
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Daud Abdullah: Shocking revelations on
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Palestine Papers: "The biggest Yerushalayim"
Ramat Shlomo, Israel – For all the international controversy over construction at this quiet settlement in north Jerusalem, there is little of it in evidence.
The controversy came last year, when the Jerusalem municipality approved 1,600 new housing tenders while Joe Biden, the US vice-president, was visiting Israel. But construction has yet to begin, and residents of this settlement – populated mostly by Orthodox Jews, a group with one of the highest birth rates in Israel – say politics are interfering with family life.
“It shouldn’t be a question of politics,” said Avraham Goldstein, a student waiting at a bus stop in the settlement. “People need to build, they want to have their families nearby. There are more than 18,000 people here. And Ramat Shlomo is obviously part of Jerusalem.”
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Meeting Minutes: Trilateral - United States,
Israel and Palestine
Meeting Minutes: Borders with Erekat, Qurei
and Livni
Palestine Papers: The "napkin map" revealed
The Palestine Papers include a rendering of the Israeli land swap map presented in mid-2008 to Mahmoud Abbas.
The Palestinian Authority proposed an unprecedented land swap to the Israeli government, offering to annex virtually all of the illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem.
Not only did the Israeli government offer no concessions in return, but – as The Palestine Papers now reveal – it responded with an even more aggressive land swap: Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert wanted to annex more than 10% of the West Bank (including the major settlements in Ma’ale Adumim, Ariel and elsewhere), in exchange for sparsely-populated farmland along the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
The Israeli offer is documented in a Palestinian rendition of what’s colloquially called “the napkin map,” a rendering of which is revealed for the first time in The Palestine Papers.
Scoop Link: The Palestine Papers Main Page
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