"People are negotiating. (Laughter.)"

Hilarious. But are they laughing with you or at you.

Other lines from Condoleezza Rice's Press Conference:

And the more that they look forward, I think, to how they're actually going to get to an agreement, which is what you -- we really want them to do; after all, any joint document will not ultimately be worth the paper it's written on if eventually, they don't get to an actual agreement on a Palestinian state.

No mention of stopping terrorism. Which of course puts the ball in Israel's court and relieves Abbas and his buddy's of making any concessions.

But I think everybody understands who is responsible for the violence
now and it's coming out of Gaza and it's not controlled by the Palestinian
Authority.

Oh for the good old days--when the PA was in charge of Gaza and the strong hand of Abbas kept the rockets from being fired. Oh wait...according to Aaron Klein in his new book Schmoozing With Terrorists:

Abu Ahmed, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades leader in the northern Gaza Strip, told WND his group, including the militants launching rockets, is loyal to Abbas and coordinates "resistance operations" with the Fatah party.

"The Al Aqsa Brigades is the military wing of the Fatah and the President Abu Mazen (Abbas) is the chairman of the movement. We are committed to our leadership, to Abu Mazen. All our activity is in accordance with the political line of Fatah, which consists of fighting the occupation until the creation of a Palestinian state. The rocket shooting is part of this vision," Abu Ahmed said. All rockets fired from Gaza have been launched from the northern part of the territory, which falls within Abu Ahmed's jurisdiction in the Brigades. [Hat tip: Yid With Lid; emphasis added]

According to Rice, the real breakthrough is in her novel approach in talking about what the Palestinians want before what Israel needs:

The real breakthrough, it was actually a few months ago now, is that for a long time,
if you remember, the argument was you couldn't talk about the Palestinian state or core issues, which was in phase three, until you had completed phase one, which got us into an extended kind of circular problem for a long time about phase one. Well, that -- now we've broken through and they are, indeed, talking about phase -- what's in phase three, which is the establishment of a Palestinian state.

But it obviously wouldn't work unless phase one is actually implemented and
it's just a practical matter. It would not work unless -- if you just read the -- I'd just encourage you to go read the phase one obligations and ask yourself, could you imagine establishing a Palestinian state without having met the phase one obligations? It just wouldn't work.

Let's just wait and see what will happen when everything that Abbas wants is settled and all that remains is to sign on the dotted line--let's see whether the pressure is on Abbas to put an end to Palestinian terrorism, or whether the pressure will be on Rice to finish the job.

Let's see who's laughing then.

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