I think it is time to stop pretending that all of the documents purported to be leaked Palestinian Authority documents are what they claim to be, namely PA diplomatic memos. Some are, but many are not. Barry Rubin goes into great detail in his blog posting in describing this fabrication. The Palestinian Authority itself has forcefully rejected that the papers released which describe Palestinian concessions in the peace process are in fact real documents. In fact, they are arguing that the positions attributed to the PA are actually the Israeli positions, something which Barry Rubin demonstrated to be the case in his blog post!
It has been argued that the release of the documents present Israel in a bad light, namely as rejecting reasonable Palestinian offers. Therefore, some have suggested that the documents may have been released in order to bring condemnation upon Israel. J Street’s Ben Ami, in a rush to condemn Israel, seized on them to proclaim that the Palestinians are a peace partner and that Israel has refused to negotiate. Yet, this scenario for the release of the documents does not make sense because the PA has already stated flatly that they did not make the offers in question. One could make the case that any organization utilizing these documents to blame Israel is one that would condemn Israel anyway. J Street is clearly among them. My colleagues who continually try to explain why they are supportive of J Street, clinging to the conception that J Street is supportive and not overly critical of Israel, are finding themselves tiring of presenting a weakening, if not failing, argument.
The release of the documents has definitely done harm to the Palestinian Authority. As the PA faces both internal criticism (Hamas as well as no small part of Fatah) and external criticism (from most, if not all, of the Arab world) for its theoretical willingness to compromise on key issues, to suggest that it made such compromises in negotiations can only do it harm. So what is the origin of these papers?
Well, certainly there are those who will argue that they were created in an Israeli attempt to do harm to the PA by weakening it. This is absurd. Al Jazeera would certainly be much more willing to promote Israeli attempts to harm the PA than it would be to criticize the PA. Additionally, Israel has nothing to gain by weakening the PA and strengthening Hamas.
No, the most likely scenario is one in which Hamas, a supporter of Hamas such as Iran or Hizballah, or an opponent of Abbas among Fatah supporters (Dahlan) created the concession documents and placed them among some legitimate documents in order to make the fabricated ones look real and to weaken the PA and to undermine its ability to represent the Palestinian people in negotiations. Now we can talk about whether or not the PA has a reasonable claim to that status in the first place, having lost the only election held in recent years, but this at least is a reasonable option. I think that an attempt to undermine or even oust Abbas is a reasonable guess as to why these documents were released to the press by whomever chose to do so.