President Barack Obama’s efforts to reach out to the Arab world have been tarnished after it emerged that he reneged on an important Bush administration pledge to the Palestinian leadership.
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Confidential Palestinian documents leaked to Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based television network, suggest that Mr Obama retreated from a promise that territory occupied by Israel after the Six Day War of 1967 should become the basis for a future Palestinian state.
The documents, part of a second tranche of the “Palestine Papers” released by Al Jazeera on Monday evening, indicate that Mr Obama’s change of heart was the result of Israeli pressure.
That fact alone is likely to damage Mr Obama’s carefully-cultivated image as a friend of the Arab world.
According to the papers, Condoleezza Rice, President George W Bush’s secretary of state, explicitly endorsed the use of 1967 borders as a basis for future negotiations on dividing territory in the months after the Annapolis peace conference in 2007.
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It was accepted that adjustments to the border would have to be made to allow Israel to annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank in return for land in Israel.
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Records of a meeting in October 2009 between Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, and George Mitchell, Mr Obama’s Middle East envoy, show the Americans wavering.
The minutes indicate that Mr Erekat urged the United States publicly to declare its support for “two states along the ’67 border with agreed swaps”, a commitment Ms Rice only made in private.
Mr Mitchell noted that the US had come under fierce Israeli pressure to resist such a move, but promised to pursue the matter.
The next day, however, he told Mr Erekat to drop the subject.
“Again, I tell you that President Obama does not accept prior decisions by Bush,” the documents show Mr Mitchell as saying. “Don’t use this because it can hurt you.”
Mr Erekat seems stunned by the warning, replying: “But this was an agreement with Secretary Rice... For God’s sake, she said to put it on the record.”
