What Is Standing In The Way Of The Mideast Peace Talks?

Charles Krauthammer challenges: Your Move, Abbas, on what is really blocking the way to peace:

What's standing in the way? Israeli settlements? Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, one of Israel's most nationalist politicians, lives in a settlement and has said openly that to achieve peace he and his family would abandon their home. What about the religious settlers? Might they not resist? Some tried that during the Gaza withdrawal, clinging to synagogue rooftops. What happened? Jewish soldiers pulled them down and took them away. If Israel is offered real peace, the soldiers will do that again.

The obstacle today, as always, is Palestinian refusal to accept a Jewish state.
That has been the core issue of the conflict from 1947 through Camp David 2000, when Arafat rejected Israel's extraordinarily generous peace offer, made no counteroffer and started a terror war (the Second Intifada) two months later.

A final peace was there to be had. It remains on the table today. Unfortunately, there's no more sign today of a Palestinian desire for final peace than there was at Camp David. Even if Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wants such an agreement (doubtful but possible), he simply doesn't have the authority. To accept a Jewish state, Abbas needs some kind of national consensus behind him. He doesn't even have a partial consensus. Hamas, which exists to destroy Israel, controls part of Palestine (Gaza) and is a powerful rival to Abbas's Fatah even in his home territory of the West Bank.

Indeed, this week Abbas flatly told al-Quds, the leading Palestinian newspaper, "We won't recognize Israel as a Jewish state." Nice way to get things off on the right foot.

What will Abbas do? Unable and/or unwilling to make peace, he will exploit President Obama's tactical blunder, the settlement freeze imposed on Israel despite the fact that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations had gone on without such a precondition for 16 years prior. Abbas will walk out if the freeze is not renewed on Sept. 26. You don't need to be prescient to see that coming. Abbas has already announced that is what he'll do.

Of course, it is a whole lot easier to say that Israel is to blame. After all, Israel can be pressured to make all kinds of concessions, including those that are against its own interests--everything from disengaging from Gaza  which is now a launching pad for rockets to be fired deeper and deeper into Israel to releasing Palestinian terrorists who just turn around and return to attacking Israeli civilians.

There is no point in pressuring Abbas--his corruption and incompetence is exceeded only by his lack of support from his own people to even attend these talks, let alone actually negotiate.

If the media would ever bother to stand up at a press conference and question the underlying assumptions behind these talks, we would be treated to a fisking similar to what happened last year when the State Department spokesman attempted to claim that not only had the Obama administration made progress, but had done more in its first term than Bush had done in 8 years.

In the absence of anyone in the media willing to challenge this farce, we are reduced to waiting for Abbas to flee the talks in fear of the thought of taking responsibility for an actual decision--followed by the necessary blaime-Israel charade.

Technorati Tag: Mideast Talks and Abbas.