Ziyad Clot, a French lawyer who advised the Palestinian side in negotiations with Israel during the Annapolis effort, has announced himself as the whistle-blower and source of the highly controversial "Palestine Papers."
He reports today at Al Jazeera why he did it. This shows that former lead negotiator Saeb Erekat was wrong about the source of the papers when he accused Al Jazeera Transparency Project chief Clayton Swisher of being a CIA agent who orchestrated this. Erekat recently retracted the charges against Swisher, who is author and editor of a book release this week titled The Palestine Papers: The End of the Road?.
A clip of Ziyad Clot's statement which should be read in full:
The "peace negotiations" were a deceptive farce, whereby biased terms were unilaterally imposed by Israel and systematically endorsed by the US and EU capitals. Far from enabling a negotiated fair end of the conflict, the pursuit of the Oslo process has deepened Israeli segregationist policies and justified the tightening of the security control imposed on the Palestinian population as well as its geographical fragmentation. Far for preserving the land on which to build a State, it has tolerated the intensification of the colonisation of the Palestinian territory. Far from maintaining a national cohesion, the process I participated in, albeit briefly, proved to be instrumental in creating and aggravating divisions amongst Palestinians. In its most recent developments, it became a cruel enterprise from which the Palestinians of Gaza have suffered the most.
This account reinforces for me why I believe that ultimately neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli political system can bear the stress of making constructive compromises leading to a two-state solution. Sitting both parties in the room and pushing them to work toward compromise is folly.
A structure of stakeholders that shoves the parties forward, with them reluctant but ultimately agreeing, is the only way I feel that a stable two-state producing equilibrium can be reached.
Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note. Clemons can be followed on Twitter @SCClemons