PLO upset at Quartet statement

From Ma'an:

PLO official Yasser Abed Rabbo told Kuwait news agency KUNA Monday that the latest Quartet statement on the peace process was "regretful" and fell short of the Palestinians' expectations.

The statement, which focused on getting sides back to the negotiating table as an "imperative" for regional stability, did not mention Israel's failure to stop settlement construction on Palestinian lands, an issue PLO negotiators say remains the stumbling block to a return to talks.

In their statement, the Quartet urged sides "to undertake urgently efforts to expedite Israeli-Palestinian and comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace, which is imperative to avoiding outcomes detrimental to the region."

Abed Rabbo told KUNA that he blamed Quartet Envoy and former British premier Tony Blair for the weak statement.

In fact, the Quartet statement did say

The Quartet regrets the discontinuation of Israel’s ten month moratorium on settlement activity and strongly reaffirms that unilateral actions by either party cannot prejudge the outcome of negotiations and will not be recognized by the international community.

So once again, the PLO is lying.

What they are really angry about is that the statement called on them to resume negotiations, and they don't want to have their intransigence exposed for the world to see. They'd rather pretend that the "settlements" - with all of the building activity being within existing boundaries of the communities, none of them expanding into any areas that the Palestinian Arabs would end up with at the end of any negotiations - are the obstacle.

But perhaps they weren't happy that the statement also condemned rocket fire from Gaza.