Although the Palestine Papers are full of references from the Obama adminstration that “President Obama does not accept prior decisions by Bush” (in the words of George Mitchell), there are a few things that the current White House agrees with the last administration on. Seumas Milne and Ian Black report for the Guardian and on the US’s repeated threats to cut off funding to the PA if there are any leadership changes:
The Obama administration has privately made clear that it will not allow any change of Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, the leaked papers reveal, let alone any repetition of the Hamas election victory that briefly gave the Islamists control of the Palestinian Authority five years ago.
That is despite the fact that the democratic legitimacy of both the Palestinian president and Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), and prime minister, Salam Fayyad, is strongly contested among Palestinians, and there are no plans for new elections in either the West Bank or Gaza.
“The new US administration expects to see the same Palestinian faces(Abu Mazen and Salam Fayyad) if it is to continue funding the Palestinian Authority,” the then assistant secretary of state David Welch is recorded as telling Fayyad in November 2008. Most of the PA’s funding comes from the US and European Union.
Almost a year later, the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, reacted angrily to news that Abbas had threatened to resign and call for new presidential elections. She told Palestinian negotiators: “Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] not running in the election is not an option – there is no alternative to him.” The threat was withdrawn and no election was held. . .
The US government’s private determination to use its financial and military leverage to keep the existing regime in place — while publicly continuing to maintain that Palestinians are free to choose their own leaders — echoes the Bush administration’s veto on attempts to create a Palestinian national unity administration after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007.
The story ends:
The dependence of the existing PA and PLO leadership on US support is well understood by those leaders, as the documents underline. Referring to Obama’s attempt to kickstart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2009, US state department official David Hale told chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat: “We need the help of friends like you.”
Erekat replied that the US president’s “success is my survival”.
