Bye-bye Saeb

Saeb Erakat, the long-time Palestinian negotiator and spokesman for the Palestine Authority, has resigned. He accepted responsibilityy for the so-called Pali-leaks that were published by Al Jazeera and the Guardian newspaper, that were apparently stolen/leaked from his office. At first the PA and Erakat denied that the leaks were true and claimed they were falsified by Al Jazeera to undermine the PA and they banned Al Jazeera altogether from the PA. But, then in an interview with the BBC, Erakat was forced to admit that at least some of the leaks were factually correct and finally he resigned.

The leaks covered the period around 2008 when the PA under Pres. Abbas were intensely negotiating with PM Olmert. During this time, in secret, the PA agreed to major compromises, unknown to the Israeli and Palestinian publics. It is noteworthy that these negotiations took place without any preconditions and proceeded while Israel was building on the West Bank. What was shocking to the Palestinians was that Abbas and Erakat agreed to greatly limit the number of Palestinian "refugees" that would be allowed into Israel, recognizing that to insist on all of them would be a deal breaker, and that they agreed that Israel should retain areas of the West Bank where there is dense Jewish settlement, in exchange for other parcels of land. Once these concessions were revealed the PA leadership took a quick step backwards and denied the veracity of these leaks. What was noteworthy was that instead of admitting their compromise positions and trying to prepare their public for peace, they denied the compromises and insisted that they never made and would never make such concessions. In the face of the Palestinian "street" they caved.

While this fiasco was on-going, the demonstrations and eventual resignation of Pres. Mubarak were taking place in Egypt. This put into sharp relief the fact that there has not been an election in the PA for more than 5 years since Abbas cancelled the elections that should have taken place in January 2009. In effect he is still serving illegally. With the ferment of uprisings for democracy on-going in the Arab world (Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Jordan) Abbas realized that he needed to forestall such demonstrations in the PA, and so he announced new elections in the coming months. However, he will not be running again. Most people give him little chance anyway once the concessions of the Pali-leaks were revealed. Of course, Hamas in Gaza immediately denounced the elections and refused to participate in them. Hamas will not allow any new elections in Gaza, having their consolidated power by force.

Now that Mubarak has gone, and he was the principal actor trying to bring Fatah of the PA and Hamas of Gaza together again, it is unlikely that this split can ever be healed. So talk of a "two state solution" is outdated, now there must be at least a "three state solution." The worst case scenario is that an election in the West Bank will return Hamas as the leadership of the PA. Then we will be back to a "one state solution" as desired by Hamas (i.e. the destruction of Israel) and this will be a much more dangerous situation for Israel. But, Fatah and the IDF have done a good job in removing the Hamas leadership from the PA, so such an outcome is unlikely although possible. It would be just like the Palestinians to take the opposite course to all the other Arabs, and vote for an autocratic extremist regime rather than opting for more democracy.