Rashid Khalidi on the Holy Land Leaks
Rashid Khalidi, one of the globe’s leading scholars on the modern Middle East, and arguably among the most knowledgeable people in the world on the Israel\Palestine conflict spoke yesterday with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! about the leaked PA documents that recently have come to light in the Guardian and Al-Jazeera. It is a short interview and certainly worth your time.
From his interview with Amy Goodman yesterday:
…the revelations are quite striking. The most important, I think, is the degree to which not only Palestinian negotiators were forthcoming, but the degree to which the Israelis were unwilling to accept concessions. It seriously casts into doubt the idea that Israel would accept anything but complete capitulation by the Palestinians to absolutely everything they’re demanding on every front. We’ve heard about Jerusalem. There is presumably more to come.
But another thing that comes out very strikingly from these documents is the degree to which the United States is twisting the arm of the Palestinians, the degree to which American diplomats, whether Hillary Rodham Clinton or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the previous administration, are unsympathetic to the Palestinians and are in cahoots, in Aaron David Miller’s words, our lawyers for Israel—it’s actually worse than Miller, who was involved in the negotiations for many years, says, from these documents.”
