Al Jazeera copies Wiki Leaks

SENIOR Palestinian Authority officials are expected to face intense pressure to resign amid growing public anger over revelations that they were prepared to give away some of the Palestinians' most cherished claims in their desire to sign a peace agreement with Israel.

A cache of leaked documents chronicling the past decade of behind-the-scenes Middle East peace negotiations has shown the Palestinian leadership to be so eager for an agreement that it was prepared to allow Israel to keep almost all Jewish settlements in occupied East Jerusalem.

The trove of more than 1600 documents, which has been leaked to the al-Jazeera news network, indicates that Israel rejected the unprecedented Palestinian offer as insufficient.

Yesterday, former Palestinian legal adviser Diana Buttu called on chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat to resign.

''It is clear that there is a rising level of desperation [by Palestinian negotiators] and complete lack of any connection to the reality Palestinians face,'' she said.

The Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, condemned the Palestinian Authority leadership, saying it had no credibility to carry on negotiations.

''The importance of the content of the papers is that it proved what the Palestinian side … was afraid would happen during the negotiations, and it confirmed that the negotiating team has given real concessions in what are the basic principles of the Palestinian people,'' senior Hamas spokesman Oussama Hamdan said.

Palestinian negotiators angrily denied the reports, labelling many of the claims as false.

Former Palestinian Authority prime minister Ahmed Qureia, who features throughout the leaked documents, claimed that ''many parts of the documents were fabricated as part of the incitement against the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian leadership''.

He denied making an offer on the Jewish enclaves in East Jerusalem, claiming Israel refused to discuss the issue.

Mr Erekat also dismissed the documents as ''a bunch of lies'' during an appearance on al-Jazeera television.

Other details expected to be released in coming days will reportedly reveal how Israeli leaders privately asked for some Arab citizens to be transferred to a new Palestinian state; an intimate level of covert co-operation between Israeli security forces and the Palestinian Authority; secret plans to crush Hamas; and how the authority's leaders were privately tipped off about Israel's 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead offensive in Gaza.

The documents contradict claims by successive Israeli leaders that they had ''no partner for peace'', instead showing in startling detail the extent to which Palestinian negotiators were prepared to bend to satisfy Israeli demands.

Minute-by-minute accounts of key meetings make clear that Palestinian negotiators were not only prepared to make general concessions but also to correlate their offers with maps and precise details. At one meeting early last year, Mr Erekat was quoted as saying: ''What is in that paper gives [the Israelis] the biggest Yerushalayim [Jerusalem] in Jewish history, [a merely] symbolic number of refugees return, [a] demilitarised [Palestinian] state … what more can I give?''

Regarding the offer to give up all claims over large slices of East Jerusalem, where a ring of illegal Jewish settlements has made it all but impossible for the city to become the shared capital of Israel and a Palestinian state, Mr Qureia said ''this is the first time in history that we make such a proposition; we refused to do so in Camp David'', referring to failed peace talks in 2000 between then Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat and Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak.

The revelations are also likely to damage the credibility of the Palestinian leadership among its own people, as the documents reveal the officials being prepared to trade away the right of return for Palestinian refugees and control over holy sites in Jerusalem's Old City.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said yesterday the documents showed the only path to peace was through a long-term interim agreement.

''Even the most left-wing government of [Ehud] Olmert and [then foreign minister Tzipi] Livni did not manage to reach a peace agreement despite the many concessions,'' he said.

''The documents prove that if even Olmert and Livni couldn't reach a compromise … everyone will eventually see that the only solution is a long-term interim agreement.''