Palestine: Anger At Palestine Papers · Global Voices
Mays Dagher

Al Jazeera’s release of the Palestine Papers, hundreds of documents related to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, has provoked strong reactions throughout the Palestinian blogosphere. In this post we hear from bloggers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, who have expressed their opinions both about the papers, and Al Jazeera’s role in releasing them.
In Gaza Seeran Nofal attacks the news channel in a post entitled “Stop It, Al Jazeera”. She alludes to the (Arabic-language) channel's alleged Islamist leanings and support of Hamas, saying:
أعتقد بأن الوقت ليس مُناسباً لبث مثل هذه الوثائق حتى لو كانت تتمتع بالمصداقية ، فنحن نعاني من “فسخ” بين أكبر فصيلين ، تأتي هذه القناة لتعزز الإنقسام بنشرها لهذه الوثائق؟ أعتقد أن الجزيرة لعبت وما تزال دوراً في ترسيخ الإنقسام بين الفلسطينين
Mahmoud Abbas. Photo courtesy of Olivier Pacteau under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
However, Mohammed Abu Allan shows a photo of a big signboard in one street in Ramallah on which is written “Al Jazeera is not Arab, Al Jazeera is Zionist”, and comments:
We move on to reactions to the content of the papers, and hear from Amal in Gaza:
Surprisingly, what these papers expose is relatively not shocking, for we all simply knew something wrong was happening. We just chose not to believe, or I would rather say convinced ourselves we were wrong. […] What the “Palestine papers” expose in brief is, ‘Hundreds of people died for nothing, hundreds of lands were simply given away, and negotiations were held for us to give not to take back what once was ours.’ So in a briefer brief, we have been living a web of lies. […] Anyway, I have come to a conclusion that, watching these exposés is like watching a lousy play that you wish the curtains to fall any time soon, but at the same time you don’t want to leave because you don’t want to miss the ending.
Laila El-Haddad, who is from Gaza but lives in the United States, has spoken to friends and family in Gaza about the papers:
More than anything, the details in the Palestine papers show just how out of touch with this reality the negotiators were, and how they chose to ignore this reality. It is this revelation – or reminder – that has most angered and distressed many Palestinians. […] In a bitter irony, and a stark reminder of the conditions many Palestinians in Gaza continue to live under, some cousins and friends there were not yet even aware of the revelations when I spoke with them, because they had no electricity.
Another Gaza blogger, Mohammed Rabah Suliman, has no patience for Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator:
The disparity between a state and a country is sadly indistinct to Erekat who has been overwhelmingly trying to create it for the past 18 years but failed. All I’ve got to tell him, being a Palestinian living in the besieged Gaza Strip, “I’d rather be stateless all my life than give up one meter of my country.”