All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
Our next guest is Kathleen Christensen.
She's a counter puncher over there at counterpunch.org.
She's a former CIA political analyst and the author of several books on Palestine, including Palestine in pieces, coauthored with her late husband, Bill Christensen.
They wrote a great many pieces together at counterpunch.
He died last year, but she continues to write.
Welcome to the show, Kathleen.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
Well, you know, I'm not sure.
I'm trying to figure out why I've never talked with you before.
I've been reading you.
And before that, you and your husband's articles at counterpunch for years and years.
It's always really great stuff.
And I'm sorry I never got a chance to talk with him.
But I am very glad to have you here today.
I'm glad to be here.
Thanks much.
OK, so we got three articles in question here, really two that I want to talk about, the Palestine papers and what they reveal about the U.S.
-Israeli agenda.
And the second is Wikileaks cables on Israel's Gaza onslaught.
First of all, let's talk about these Palestine papers.
What are they?
Where do they come from and where can people find them?
They come from Al Jazeera.
You can find them on the on the Al Jazeera website, which I believe is Al Jazeera dot com.
But but you better Google that to make sure.
Yeah, it's actually dot net dot com.
It's a fake one.
That's right.
That's right.
And these come.
These are not Wikileaks documents.
These are not documents released by Julian Assange and and and Bradley Manning and so on.
These all come from some Palestinian source.
And I don't think anybody knows or nobody's saying anyway who released these documents, but there are almost seventeen hundred of them all covering a period dating back to a period between 1999 and 2010, fairly late in the year, last year.
And all having to do directly or indirectly with the so-called peace process between the Palestinians and Israel.
And they what they reveal in brief, by the way, on the on the Al Jazeera website, there are not only these documents available, but a raft of analysis of them by by experts like Ali Abunimah and golly, many others.
And I can't think of any other names.
But Ali Abunimah, who who himself runs a website called Electronic Intipada, has has analyzed written many articles about these documents.
And he he and the other commentators have had access to them for, I think, months as they sorted through and, you know, found out which were the interesting articles and and and so on.
So anyway, I would recommend people go to the Al Jazeera website to get the whole the whole picture.
But briefly, what they show is that the Palestinian Authority, that is the leadership of the so-called moderate leadership of the Palestinians, which is in opposition to Hamas, which is in power in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority basically was willing to to give away the game, to give away just about every Palestinian demand and every give in on every Palestinian grievance to Israel.
And the Israelis still thumb their nose at the Palestinians and said, no, this is not enough.
The Palestinian Authority was willing to cede territory amounting to, I think, something like six six to seven percent of the West Bank, which is a small territory to begin with, along the border and in the Jerusalem area, cede that territory to Israel in return for getting an equal amount of territory in a much less attractive area along the borders of Gaza, which is a less fertile, more desolate area.
So it was not a not a good trade of real estate.
And in the area that the areas that the Palestinians were willing to cede to Israel fit most of the Israeli settlements, particularly around Jerusalem.
The Palestinians were willing to give the Israelis sovereignty over the all but one of the large, large Jewish settlements that are in Arab East Jerusalem, as well as other settlements.
Also, totaling the settlements the Palestinians were willing to cede would have presently housed 400,000 of the 500,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in other words, 80 percent.
So they they were willing to give away prime real estate.
Then they also were willing to make huge concessions on the the Palestinians right of return, which is the the most fundamental issue in the Palestinian to the Palestinians.
This is as far as Palestinians are concerned, the fact that there are over 400 I mean, I'm sorry, four million, probably around four and a half million refugees, Palestinian refugees who are who were themselves expelled or and dispossessed in 1948 when Israel was created or are their descendants.
The right of return to Palestinians means their right to reclaim their houses and land in in inside what is now Israel or be compensated.
And and the Palestinians are willing to negotiate over this.
The Israelis have never been.
But these papers show that the Palestinian Authority was willing not to negotiate.
In other words, to just sort of basically let the problem go.
And they would have I think the Israelis offered five to to allow the return of one thousand Palestinian refugees a year for five years.
Well, that's five thousand people.
I've seen other reports that indicate it was ten thousand people out of four and a half million.
So so that's nothing.
And the Palestinians were would have given away that right, which is, as I said, the most fundamental grievance of the Palestinians.
And makes the Palestinian Authority very unpopular.
All right.
So so far we have basically we're willing to give up the P.A. was basically willing to give up the right of return.
Sounds like they're willing to give up almost all or even any more claim on sovereignty over East Jerusalem.
Perhaps you can get into better detail about that.
And then they were willing to give up basically all the settlements that already exist in the West Bank.
They weren't calling for the rollback of any of them.
This amounts, it sounds like, to complete unconditional surrender.
And the Israelis said it's still not good enough.
Yeah, that's right.
It was it was almost complete unconditional surrender.
The the Palestinians did hold out for for reclaiming the land on which a couple of major settlements sit.
Ariel in the north, Malaya Dumeim, which is right outside Jerusalem and one or two others, which how the number of settlers also.
So so the Palestinians were wanted to reclaim the the land in the settlements where about 100000 of the of the Israeli of the 500000 Israeli settlers live.
So it wasn't total surrender.
It was just you could say 99 percent.
Yeah.
One conditional surrender.
Yeah, exactly.
And as you say, the Israelis just said no.
Zippy Livni, who was then foreign minister, these were mostly what I'm talking about, had to do with negotiations going on in 2008.
And she just said basically, thanks, but no thanks.
She even said, thank you, but this isn't enough.
And which is just incredible.
Then there were also cables from 2009 when the Obama administration had come in that show, as did the earlier cables, that the United States sided totally with Israel's demands and kept never pressured Israel and kept the pressure on the Palestinians to make more and more concessions and sort of in a disdainful tone of voice that, you know, you know, you can't expect to have everything or you can't.
People are displaced in countries have this has been happening for centuries and you shouldn't worry about this and and so on.
The United States had a had a an excuse for undermining just about every Palestinian demand and and was continuing to put pressure on them.
And as I say, this was true both in the Bush administration and in the Obama administration.
George Mitchell was, judging by these papers, was no more accommodating or sympathetic to the Palestinians than anybody in the Bush administration had ever been.
I guess my question for you at this point, Kathleen, is if the Palestinian Authority is basically willing to give up so much like this and I guess we could go back and talk about what these documents, these Palestine papers reveal about even Camp David back in the year 2000.
But if they're willing to give up everything and the Likud or Kadima types in power in Israel will not take yes for an answer, will not take crying uncle for an OK, then then what is it that they want?
Is this about greater Israel?
We're just at some point the Likud party figures they'll just drive them all into the into Jordan or somewhere or what?
I think you're exactly right.
It is all about greater Israel.
I mean, this has been basically the Zionist objective from the beginning to to make all of Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Jordan into a Jewish state, which means no non-Jews, certainly not many of them and not in any, you know, in any position of power, which is why the Palestinian 750,000 of them were expelled and dispossessed by Israel in 1948 when the when the Israeli state was created.
And they've been very patient.
They, the Zionists and the Israeli government have been very patient.
But their basic objective is not to give the Palestinians to avoid giving the Palestinians any significant control anywhere in Palestine.
So if there ever is a two state solution coming out of this so-called peace process, which is now basically dead, which means that there won't be a two state solution.
But the best I think the Palestinians could ever have expected out of the Israelis was a state in pieces.
That was actually the title of my husband's and my most recent book, Palestine in Pieces, a state of little cantons separated by roads that were accessible only by Israeli Israelis and Israeli settlers who are distinguished from Palestinians because they have different color license plates and broken up by Israeli settlements all over the West Bank and so on.
And I think that this retention of this territory and certainly retention of of effective control over the whole territory has been the Israeli objective.
Well, now, I can't remember how I ever got this idea, Kathleen, but somehow I believed that in kind of popular discussion in Israeli politics, that this was no longer a credible position to take, that this was like the right wingist crazies believed in this greater Israel thing and that most Israelis didn't want that and wanted a solution to, you know, a peaceful one to the Palestinian problem rather than some giant forced march into Jordan.
Well, there is there are different strains of Israeli thinking.
And this was, for instance, Yitzhak Rabin's thought finally when he started to negotiate and began the he and the Palestinians began the Oslo peace process in the early 90s, because I think the left so-called in Israel represented by Rabin and the Labor Party, which is now almost totally defunct, both the left and the Labor Party are almost totally defunct.
But I think Rabin and company thought that that the Palestinians were getting to be so numerous and and so obstreperous.
There had just been from the late 80s through the into the early 90s, another intifada by the Palestinians, an uprising which was very hard for the Israelis to control because it was totally nonviolent.
The only violence involved was were some stones thrown by Palestinians and the Israelis.
I think began to think those Israelis on the left who were then more powerful and more numerous than the right wing in Israel began to think that the only way to get any kind of peaceful resolution might might mean that they would have to relinquish control over some territory.
I don't think that Rabin ever thought of giving the Palestinians all of the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem for a state, which is the only the only possible way that the Palestinians could have a viable state.
And Rabin himself, you know, delayed on all of the the various timetables in the Oslo peace process.
And then, of course, he was assassinated by the right wing, by a right winger.
And ever since then, Israel has been moving more and more inexorably rightward.
And now they don't even they don't even hide it.
And the left has been so emasculated for various reasons because they're they're they're afraid or they claim to be afraid of, you know, Palestinian terror, suicide bombers, rocket attacks from Gaza and so on.
So the population has moved more and more to the right, which is why we have a the most radically right wing government in Israel's history, which, as I said, doesn't even try to hide its racist, its racist impulses and its racism, its racist policies.
I'm sorry, we're short on time here.
And there's a couple more things I want to get to.
Maybe we'll only have time for one.
Can you tell us about your article here is called Wikileaks Cables on Israel's Gaza onslaught.
I encourage everybody to go read that at counterpunch dot org.
But can you tell us about what's learned about the Israeli war against the Gaza Strip in December away in January or nine?
What are these cables?
This is an article based on three cables released by Wikileaks about a visit by a U.S. under, I mean, Assistant Secretary of State in the Obama administration who went to Israel in just about a year ago in January of 2010, a year after the Gaza assault ended and a year after Obama took office.
And what these three cables reveal is more about U.S., the U.S. attitude toward Israel and the U.S. impulse to protect Israel than it it isn't.
They don't reveal anything in particular about the actual assault, except that the Israeli generals with whom this assistant secretary of state met repeatedly, all of the top brass of the Israeli military, continued to make excuses.
This is after the Goldstone report had come out.
I guess about four months after it had come out, the Israelis denied everything that the Goldstone report said about what about Israel's conduct during this war.
The Goldstone report concluded that the Israelis had committed war crimes, that Hamas had also committed some war crimes, but the Israelis much more so.
And the Israelis were denying that in these meetings with the U.S. assistant secretary.
And what's most interesting about them is that the assistant secretary himself, a guy named Michael Posner, was trying to help the Israelis improve their international image, urging them to conduct some kind of investigation so it'll look as though you're trying to look into these things and so on.
But basically to put out a better, make a better propaganda effort on their own behalf.
He was acting like a spin coach on behalf of the Israelis.
He claimed that the Goldstone report was flawed, was not true, and that much of the international criticism of Israel because of the assault was also unfair and disproportionate, which of course is a third.
So this was the U.S. again siding with Israel.
All right.
Well, this has really been great.
I hope we can do it again, Kathleen.
Thank you very much.
I do, too.
Everybody, that's Kathleen Christensen.
She's at Counterpunch.
Our most recent book is Palestine in Pieces.
Check out counterpunch.org for the Palestine papers, what they reveal about the U.S.
Israeli agenda.
