Turns Out Fayyad Is Not A 'People' Person

You say eether and I say eyether,
You say neether and I say nyther;
Eether, eyether, neether, nyther,
Let's call the whole thing off!
Fred Astaire, Let's Call The Whole Thing Off

Well, this isn't going well at all--is it?

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad angrily left a UN Ad-Hoc Liaison Committee meeting and canceled a scheduled subsequent press conference with Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon in New York on Tuesday, after Ayalon refused to approve a summary of the meeting which said "two states" but did not include the words "two states for two peoples."


"What I say is that if the Palestinians are not willing to talk about two states for two peoples, let alone a Jewish state for Israel, then there's nothing to talk about," Ayalon told the Post in a telephone interview. "And also, I said if the Palestinians mean, at the end of the process, to have one Palestinian state and one bi-national state, this will not happen."

And this is the same Fayyad who told the Geneva Initiative to take him out of the ads in Israel--"I am your partner. Are you my partner?"

Fact is, this is not really a surprise. Abbas himself has only supported the most technical definition of 'recognition':

The Palestinian finance minister has to come to an agreement with the Israeli finance minister about the transfer of the money. So how can he make an agreement with him if [the PA finance minister] does not recognize him? So I do not demand of Hamas nor any other to recognize Israel. But from the government that works with Israelis in day to day life, yes.

Why should we expect anything more of Fayyad than what we get from Abbas?

It seems that Fayyad just cannot deal with the idea of "the Jewish people"--he's just not a 'people' person.

Technorati Tag: Mideast Peace Talks and Fayyad.