Posted: 26 Sep 2011 12:17 AM PDT
Leo Rennert
American Thinker
25 September ’11
(While the actual scenario leaves much to be desired, Leo Rennert gives a good accounting of what seems to have occurred over the last week, and the current positions of the parties involved. Y.)
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas arrived in New York with supreme confidence that the United Nations would approve Palestinian statehood and give Israel a black eye. But a funny thing happened on the East Side that sidetracked Abbas’s agenda, leaving him sputtering against a joint move by the most potent international players who confronted him with a starkly different course that Israel readily embraced.
To parse what actually happened in New York, one has to recognize that, in delving again into the morass of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there actually were two proceedings going on.
While the cameras were focused on Abbas strutting to the podium of the UN General Assembly, there were more significant, behind-the-scenes meetings of the Quartet — the United States, the European Union, Russia and the UN. And the Quartet, instead of endorsing Palestinian statehood, put all its influence behind a quite different move to get Abbas to sit down with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and resume serious negotiations — something Netanyahu repeatedly advocated for the last year.
And here was the real rub: The Quartet’s statement called for resumption of bilateral talks “without conditions” — a slap at Abbas, who kept demanding that Israel freeze Jewish construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and agree to borders along the 1967 lines before talks could even get under way.
No wonder that the Palestinians, suddenly on the defensive, slammed the Quatet’s communique, while Israel signaled its acceptance.
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