Tuesday, April 03, 2012
Elder of ZiyonThe Palestinians plan to send [a letter to] Netanyahu next week which specifies the Palestinian Authority's conditions for jumpstarting the peace negotiations.Um, I forgot, who is refusing to go to the negotiating table again?
According to Abbas, the letter states that if Israel is not willing to return to the negotiating table, the Palestinian Authority will file a complaint with international bodies.
"Israel must accept international legitimacy and stop construction in the settlements," Abbas said in Cairo.
He said that in the letter, the PA leadership wrote to Netanyahu: "You have made the PA a non-authority. You have taken away from the PA all its commitments and what it was doing and supervising. Now we have been left with nothing."
I also love "now we have been left with nothing." If Abbas had nothing, then he would have dissolved the government by now, or he would have pushed harder for "unity" with Hamas and elections.
In the end, the entire reason that Hamas and Fatah have kept their distance is the same reason they have been trying to keep things reasonably quiet with Israel. Both of them have something to lose.
Both the PA and Hamas are arresting members of the other camp, arresting journalists and others who say anything negative about them, and in general acting like dictators who will hold onto power for as long as they can.
And, as I've noted numerous times, Abbas himself has said "In the West Bank we have a good reality...the people are living a normal life." He only cries about how desperate he is when it suits him, but when it is politically expedient to say things are fine and time is on his side, he'll say that as well.
