in the last few months of two thousand and ten its flood of confidential documents poured into the headquarters of al jazeera from a secret source soon after al jazeera producer already on received a phone call i was  by some other producers and al jazeera as headquarters in doha qatar that we have a big story to work on so i was brought to doha without really any information on what i was working on except that it had to do th israeli palestinian conflict upon arrival in doha i already on was presented with the largest collection of confidential documents on the israeli palestinian conflict ever to be leaked to the press the leak of these documents would eventually lead to the resignation of the chief palestinian negotiator saeb erekat soon join the team of producers that al jazeera put in charge of producing the four part documentary on the nearly seventeen hundred documents that came to be known as the there are diary of more than a decade of talks between the israeli government and the palestinian authority and the united states the leak includes minutes of meetings internal emails reports and studies notes maps and draft agreements together they present an unprecedented  several journalists on the list who'd been invited and it was when i arrived that i was told that i just had to taint the palestine papers and it was exciting to have this first loo the papers other than the al jazeera that this would work for them no one had ever seen before outside the people who were involved so it was a thrilling experience and it's an unprecedented look inside doors that what it was that they were saying to each other you saw the dynamic between the israeli and palestinian negotiators a lot of it was very friendly very chatty very casual and but you also saw a pretty major imbalance as far as the power dynamic i mean you had this really is refusing you know one major concession after another offered by the palestinian negotiators and you also saw palestinian negotiators make some pretty unprecedented concessions when it came to major issues from jerusalem to refugee rights you know just spent days actually more than two weeks day off today reading papers  rework in terms of summarizing and looking through some of the themes but we were given the full database and i went back to the original documents because i wanted to form my own what these papers show is that you couldn't you know get and is a palestinian leadership tailor made to israel specifications as the palestinian authority practically is these a leaders who have very little legitimacy palestinian negotiators put that we're creating for you the biggest hero shall lie in in history using the israeli term for jerusalem and all of that and the concessions to sensually conceding the right of with the creation of israel nine hundred forty eight over half of the palestinian population became refugees and have never been allowed to return to their homes refugees from the one nine hundred forty eight war and their descendants as well as refugees from the one nine hundred sixty seven war now number over five million people dr solomon abu sada a palestinian expert on refugee rights and former member of the palestine national council was shocked by how the palestinian negotiators dealt with the issue of the return they said all right if you don't do that we would demand that i split them and that's because that is because that's the core of the conflict when it comes to refugees and the right of return we learned that the israelis offered a number of one thousand refugees returning for a period of five years per year or a total of five thousand refugees returning to their homeland out of more than five million refugees got around the world in a private meeting palestinian president mahmoud abbas told the palestinian negotiating team quote on numbers of refugees it is illogical to ask israel to take five million or indeed one million that would mean the end of israel abbas also described israel's offer of five thousand over five years as not acceptable however three months later palestinian chief negotiator saeb erekat made reference to israeli prime minister a hoot almer accepting a proposal of the return of just ten thousand refugees ten years i was proposing the return of ten thousand refugees or any specific number for that matter however in early two thousand and ten erekat office released a paper to the media proposing the return of one hundred fifty thousand refugees over ten years for about two percent of all refugees and their descendants around the world we also see the palestinians saying that refugees returning to be settled in a future palestinian state would meaning even a future state of palestine would not necessarily have its doors open to all the refugees wishing to return i am very angry that we diction on that which they want to live you also see israel refusing to accept any responsibility for any of its actions its historical and justice as far as its will and creating this massive refugee problem the world's largest refugee population so israel would it continually insist on saying that in any final agreement there would have to be an acknowledgment of wrongs on both sides so of course it's very important for the palestinian side to say to ask of israel to apologize for its actions and creating this refugee population and basically ethnically cleansing the native population upon its creation this is something that was continually refused by israel control over jerusalem known to israelis as you were shalom and the growing israeli settlements around jerusalem has long been a core issue of the israeli palestinian conflict one of the major revelations brought about by the palestine papers centered around jerusalem we had not known before that they had made the whole create offer of the made it to israel and to the americans so that's new and we saw palestinians offering israel to annex all the settlements around in east jerusalem except for one hundred homa which was a pretty major concession and one that has pretty big implications because the israelis argue when they continue building and expanding on settlements that you know these settlement already conceded to was a negotiation so what's the big deal anyway why is are the palestinians saying though they'll refuse to negotiate with us feet span them because we've already taken these so it explains a lot of what happens you know sort of outside of the u s role in this is that they're basically backing up whatever decision israel takes and putting pressure on the palestinians could se some of the discussions you know after president obama was elected there were very high expectations that he would take a different role from previous administrations being much more ready to put pressure on israel much more ready to be an honest broker and what we saw from the minutes of the meetings with george mitchell faery high level prestigious and for us and for it  that mitchell representing the obama administration was acting like israel's attorney to an extent that you know even made the bush administration look good in comparison  so much of the mystique of course let's say the credibility that the obama administration had and george mitchell had this and voice was based on how tight lipped he was that he left everyone guessing as to what his intentions were and who he was going to put pressure on and whether he had something up his sleeve with all this backwards and forwards sharply and what the palestine papers showed us clearly is that you know he had nothing it was a bluff you know he was never going to put in pressure on israel he was telling the palestinians you know you better go along with this if you think obama is going to put pressure on israel to get what you want you know completely miss misreading him so it exposes i think the extent to which there is no american policy there is no american brokering of the peace process it's just  flat out lawyer ing for israel and it leaves the palestinians with no choice but to sit in the end to say sorry you know you've pushed us to take off everything we're not also going to take off our underwear for you but that's basically what the negotiation so called negotiations became in other words it it shows that there is no israeli partner and there is no two state solution and it really blows the cover on the notion that you are already known and and you know they just have to agree on the specifics here these palestinian leaders offered israel to keep f almost everything it's taken up to this point and just leave us the rest and israel said no they weren't even prepared to discuss it so it blows the cover of the the whole notion of all the all the basic architecture of the so called peace process and i don't think there's any going back to that same game it's finished the palestine papers have killed it the palestinians living in israel palestinians with israeli citizenship this is a five as in descendants of those who stayed on their land in one nine hundred forty eight and today have increased the number to about one point four million palestinians to dozens of israel  one of the extraordinary proposals made by zippy livny who is seen as a partner in negotiations with palestinians time and again say they trust and like to work with she offered extraordinary proposal which basically says that certain palestinian villages that are sort of on the outskirts of israel so their villages a majority palestinian and israel that the border of israel should be redrawn to in fact exclude these village far and the reason for that is because livni made it very clear that she wants a divided two state solution meaning all israeli all palestinian and by israeli she means all jewish no  non jews living in the state of israel so she revealed basically her worldview which is that it israel should be an ethnically pure state and that any two state solution and final settlement should exclude any po now the palestinian palestinians rejected this idea but where they were weak was that they were prepared to go along with israel's self definition as a jewish state which is what opens the door to these kinds of population exchangeable ethnic cleansing type policies so this shows us that i think far from the outcome of a two state solution being two states living side by side in p in may one of the key leaders of the palestine papers revealed himself to the world a french citizen of palestinian origin who served as an advisor to chief negotiator saeb erekat in the negotiation support unit explained what compelled him to leak the documents saying the peace negotiations were deceptive farce whereby biased terms were unilaterally imposed by israel and systematically endorsed by the u s capitol these negotiations excluded for the most part the great majority of the palestinian people the seven million palestinian refugees my experience over those eleven months spent in ramallah confirms in fact that the p l o given its structure was not in a position to represent all palestinian right is a problem that i think palestinians generally recognize that over the pa two decades of the peace process gradually the palestinian people have been left  and the palestinian people have been excluded marginalized and decisions are being made for them and the palestine papers show the extent to which others had taken it upon themselves to decide the of the palestinian people in their rights so there isn't a major problem of representation dr i believe that the solution to this problem lies in reinvigorating the palestine national council  be lectures you do them by consensus on dr i believe that the majority of palestinians want to be represented by the palestine national council the majority of palestinians who live abroad like even the united states or europe people would obstruct the schemes to liquidate the case of palestine however holding elections in all the countries where palestinians live also presents major logistical problems people say it's common up to here that you know we want to have a palestinian national council elected by the whole palestinian people well that's great and i support that but it's really difficult to conceptualize how this could actually happen in reality and i'm not saying that to raise obstacles i'm saying that because i'm for the idea but the the obstacles a formidable the palestinian people  dispersed in many countries they live under regimes often times that not willing to allow their own people to have elections let alone allow the palestinians to have  elections it would depend on the so called international community dominated by the united states that has been hostile to palestinians choosing their own leaders so when we say we want elections for a power palestine and national council my question is who is going to do this who's going to be responsible who's going to make sure the process is is you know has integrity how are people going to be candidates how what does it what talking about rebuilding from scratch but dr i believe that these elections are essential to moving forward when there are elections and we have to them by eleven million people but those people who made these negotiations or it in years they were not elected by anybody however the palestinian people ultimately respond to the revelations of the palestine papers the leak of this massive trove of classified documents provides an unprecedented insight into what goes on behind closed doors in the peace process  you have a lot of jargon they kind of have to sift through and figure out what does this word mean or what does that word mean because the people who are practitioners are people who have negotiated for decades and are used to sort of that jargon and for a fresh pair of eyes it might be a little bit confusing but it's not only are you reading through many many pages we're also trying to discern what's being said and to also find patterns and to figure out what the story is and you know because obviously with some documents i mean it was very dry language and there wasn't much there so to really pick out the golden nuggets here i think this is you know these papers are going to have to be studied by historians this is a big i think it will eventually change the way we see the peace process but it will take time for the facts of the root revealed to really penetrate the popular narratives