Tell Me Again Why Obama Is Dragging Abbas Kicking And Screaming To The Negotiating Table?

It is no secret that Abbas does not want to negotiate peace face-to-face with Netanyahu--I last posted about that fact this past week.

There is talk now that the pressure being applied to Abbas has finally reached the point that he just might give in and agree to meet with Netanyahu. No doubt Obama will be quite pleased with himself.

He shouldn't be..

Sarah Honig takes a step back and puts this ongoing game into perspective, writing that US policy should instead be--Hands off Abbas:

The very notion of dragging an unwilling interlocutor to the negotiating table should be unthinkable.

The bottom-line result will anyhow be the same, whether Abbas is coerced into a talkathon or whether he is allowed to avoid the ordeal. No peace will emerge in any case – not from an Obama-led sequel to Clinton’s Camp David extravaganza and not from a continued Abbas refusal to meet face-to-face.

You can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. You can pull Abbas to a conference room somewhere but you can’t make him sign on the dotted line and, more so, you can’t make him deliver.

Who knows how seriously world leaders think that a second Palestinian state can be created--let alone both survive and live peacefully with Israel? Who knows how much is just empty talk and gestures?

Honig's conclusion applies to them as well as Obama:

He’d do both Israelis and Arabs a favor to treat us as adults who can handle our own business – if we want to. That is our choice to make.

The best all buttinskys everywhere can do is to keep their noses out of our life-and-death tribulations.

Read the whole thing.

At this point, the West has too much invested to face up to the fact their interference has changed nothing.

Hat tip: Arlene Kushner

Technorati Tag: Obama and Abbas.