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Some are calling it “the nail in the coffin of the [Mideast] peace process.” Al Jazeera obtained a trove of one thousand six hundred documents (dubbed “The Palestine Papers”) that the Middle East news agency shared “exclusively” with British paper the Guardian. Both outlets say the papers show that the Palestinians were ready in 2008 to accept an “unprecedented” proposal and a “string of concessions,” including on Israeli settlement annexation and “right of return” for Palestinian refugees.

Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland says it shows that the Israelis, in fact, “had a peace partner,” a revelation which “blow[s] apart what has been a staple of Israeli public diplomacy.” And while that may be seen to work in Palestinians’ favor, Freedland writes, “The effect of these papers on Israel will be the reverse” because “it brings national humiliation” by showing the Palestinians were willing to give away the farm to no avail. The Elder of Ziyon predicts a backlash in both the Israeli and the Palestinian camps, and Taylor Marsh writes, “In American terms, it looks like an early Valentine for Hamas.”

Did the Palestinian Authority almost engage in a Munich? Was it about to sellout Palestinian national interests in 2008?

That is the gist of the accusations being lodged by the unfriendly local government in the Gaza strip known as Hamas. Al Jazeera is reporting that it has uncovered, or acquired, documents revealing that negotiator Ahmed Ourei was ready to sanction most Jewish settlements in Jerusalem. This has elicited howls of protest from Hamas, real or feigned, which is seizing upon the chance to pose as the true defender of Palestinian national interests.

In one sense this gets the issue out into the open. In another it shows how intractable negotiations remain. The Europeans are outing a draft UN security council resolution to reaffirm the illegitimacy of the Israeli settlements. But Israel remains contumacious. Such a resolution will probably only cause it to dig in. Literally.

President Obama can only lose by getting involved. It would be surprising if he even mentions the Israeli and Palestinian conflict in his State of the Union address. There is little left to negotiate. Both sides have done it ad nauseam. They know, more or less, what the final terms will look like. But that hardly means they will agree to them.

On Tuesday, the Palestinians—with Lebanon, Brazil and South Africa as sponsors—submitted a resolution to the UN Security Council calling on the body to condemn Israeli settlement construction. Though Washington stands by its previously voiced oppositions to settlement building, the administration is not happy about this move. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressed that negotiated agreement is the way to resolution, and that the United States doesn’t see “action at the UN or any other forum as being helpful in bringing about this desired outcome.”

Washington also had some strong words for Haiti yesterday. The government there is still trying to sort out the results of a November presidential election. Monitors from the Organization of American States say that fraud was prevalent during the vote and the current president’s chosen candidate, Jude Celestin, should be taken out of the running. Speaking to the Security Council, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice urged Haiti to reject Celestin and offered a warning if it does not: “Sustained support from the international community, including the United States, will require a credible process that represents the will of the Haitian people.” Rice also said Washington is worried about the “unpredictable impact” of former-President Jean-Claude Duvalier, a corrupt ruler who was ousted in a popular uprising but recently returned to Haiti.

U.S. policy regarding Iran’s nuclear program, along with most American discourse about the policy and the program, has been one of the outstanding examples of goal substitution: treating as an ultimate objective something that is not that at all but instead is at most a subsidiary or intermediate objective, and may not even be necessary for attaining one’s true ultimate aim. The goal in question in this case is an end to Iran’s enrichment of uranium. It has come to be treated as a be-all-and-end-all objective that must be achieved—by any means necessary, some would even say. Lost sight of is the fact that Iranian enrichment per se doesn't harm anyone's interests (except possibly the economic interests of alternative suppliers of nuclear fuel). It is nuclear weapons that are the worry, and even they would become a threat only if they could and would be used in certain ways—another subject that has been insufficiently explored, but that is a topic for another day.

The House Republican caucus took two steps this week that undercut the increasingly popular claim that deficit fears will drive it toward a more restrained stance on foreign commitments and Pentagon spending.

First, a rule set for a vote Tuesday instructs Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan to set non-security discretionary spending for the rest of fiscal year 2011 at 2008 levels. Second, the Republican Study Committee, the conservative wing of caucus, Thursday announced plans to cut the same bucket of spending to 2006 levels.

Deficit hawks should be concerned by the exclusion of the nearly two thirds of discretionary spending (itself less than half of total spending) that go to security—defined by the Republicans as the wars, non-war defense, veterans, and homeland security. Their concern should not come from the resolution’s substance—it is symbolic—but from what it indicates about GOP politics.

Here’s the deal on substance. Most years, Congress funds the government through thirteen appropriations bill (excluding the mandatory programs like social security payouts that require no annual legislation). The budget committee sets the total appropriations amount, and appropriators allocate it among programs.

Robert Kagan’s feature article in the latest Weekly Standard is worth a look. As one of the leading advocates for “benevolent global hegemony”—a phrase that he coined with William Kristol in 1996—Kagan offers a reasonably fair critique of recent calls for cutting military spending. It is a good bet that the arguments presented in this essay will be repeated elsewhere as new members of Congress look to make good on their promise to make deep cuts in spending, and as other defenders of the status quo fight hard to keep the Pentagon’s budget off the table.

Like others who have ventured into this debate, Kagan goes too far in implying that national-security spending is irrelevant to the nation’s debt. It is of course true that entitlements and mandatory spending pose the greatest threat to the nation’s fiscal health, but $700+ billion isn’t chump change. The question of what we should spend on the military ought to take into account the trade-offs, an argument that Dwight Eisenhower advanced in his farewell address just over 50 years ago, and that Charles Zakaib and I highlighted last week. (See also James Ledbetter’s discussion on this point.)

According to Kagan, the explanation for why the various deficit reduction commissions have recommended cutting military spending:

Former United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali is “heartbroken” by the New Year’s Eve Coptic Church terrorist bombing in Alexandria, Egypt. Boutros-Ghali—who was also Egypt’s foreign minister and a Copt—thinks Egypt has until now avoided “the scourge of sectarianism” that has plagued the rest of the Middle East. In order to stop any Christian-Muslim animosity in its tracks, he recommends strengthening “Egyptians’ sense of citizenship” and increasing diversity in the government while educating his countrymen on “Coptic culture and Christianity,” which, he thinks, “will spread tolerance.”

And while Tunisia remains in turmoil, bloggers are debating whether America had anything to do with the overthrow of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Daniel Larison and Peter Beinart see it as a case of “benign neglect” that proves “democracy has legs” of its own, regardless of what Washington does. Lee Smith warns that “liberal democracy is not necessarily what follows once the despots have been driven out,” but wonders if Hillary Clinton’s remarks in Doha had anything to do with the Jasmine Revolution. But Abe Greenwald scoffs at the idea that the Obama administration actually cares about human rights.

Seymour Hersh has always had a gift for stirring up controversy. But his latest remarks in Doha, Qatar alleging that the American military is run by Christian fundamentalist "crusaders" are undermining his reputation as a leading investigative journalist. Hersh himself appears to see a conspiracy, led by neoconservatives in league with members of the Knights of Malta, who, he wrongly says include Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, to convert the Muslim world to Christian values.

Hersh, of course, is entitled to spin whatever theories he likes. But it is doubly unfortunate that Hersh would ventilate half-baked theories about the American military and neocons in a talk in Qatar. The Arab world is already swirling with conspiracy theories about American and Jewish influence in foreign affairs. It doesn't need fresh ones from American journalists.

As the Washington Post reports,

Neoconservative advisers to President George W. Bush took the attitude that "'we're gonna change mosques into cathedrals,'" Hersh, a writer for the New Yorker magazine, said in the speech. "That's an attitude that pervades, I'm here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command." The command is the part of the military focused on targeted missions to kill enemy leaders, primarily in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its operations are almost always secret.

He added: "This is not an atypical attitude among some military—it's a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function."

There was something poignant about watching Sen. Joe Lieberman, who has served faithfully in the Senate for decades, making his resignation speech surrounded by his family. Actually, I lied. There wasn't anything poignant about it at all. Thank goodness, Lieberman is vacating his seat, which he probably would have lost in 2012.

Lieberman liked to present himself as a kind of detached Solon--wise, sagacious, prudent, thoughtful. Instead, he was the incarnation of the senatorial blowhard. He also had the usual delusions of grandeur, convinced that the country owed him the presidency. It didn't. He was no JFK even if he was convinced that he represented a continuation of his spirit, in domestic and foreign policy.

He says he is looking for "new opportunities that will allow me to serve my country." How about he heads over to Iraq or Afghanistan, the wars he has so lustily championed, indignant that many Democrats view them with apprehension. Maybe he could convince Hamid Karzai that shutting down parliament isn't such a neat idea. Or he could serve as a politician in Israel, persuading the country that maybe targeting human rights organizations as traitorous isn't such a swift idea, either.

The best thing that Lieberman could probably do, however, would just be to go away. He isn't a bad man. He's simply a mediocre one.

Despite Afghan President Hamid Karzai's and Chinese leader Hu Jintao's best efforts, Iraq is creeping back into the headlines. Militants struck for the third straight day Wednesday with two deadly attacks that killed at least seven people and wounded over ninety north of Baghdad in Diyala province. In the larger assault, a bomber blew up an ambulance "packed with explosives" outside Iraqi police headquarters. Then, again on Thursday (making it the fourth consecutive day of attacks), three suicide car bombers killed at least fifty-two and wounded one hundred fifty Shia Muslim pilgrims marching toward a shrine in Karbala, sixty miles south of Baghdad. Ten million people are expected to participate in the march over ten days, which has "has been an annual flash point for sectarian violence." All this after "the worst single attack in Iraq since late October" on Tuesday in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit that killed forty-nine Iraqis. And although the "three-month gap since the last major attack" is proof of "the progress made by Iraq security forces," there's still "a steady trickle of deadly attacks, most often focused on security forces, government officials, or in recent months, Iraq's Christian minority." (The last major attack on a single target was an October seige on a Baghdad church that killed sixty people.)