Mahmoud Abbas is grousing that Obama is being “unclear” with him on future peace talks. That’s rich. The man who has a hundred and one excuses for avoiding direct talks and who says he’s not inciting violence (What — the square named after a murderer? A heartfelt eulogy for the mastermind of the 1972 massacre of the Israeli Olympic athletes? Oh that?) now does not appreciate getting imprecise answers. This report explains:
Abbas was speaking during a closed meeting of members of the Fatah Revolutionary Council in Ramallah.
Abbas was quoted by some Fatah operatives as saying that Egypt and Jordan supported the PA’s refusal to move to direct talks unless progress is first achieved on the issues of security and the future borders of a Palestinian state.
“We can’t go to direct negotiations like blind people,” Abbas was quoted as saying.
“We can’t enter direct negotiations without clarity.”
Abbas complained that Obama recently sent him an oral message urging him to launch direct negotiations with Israel unconditionally.
According to the PA president, Obama’s message was “unclear and ambiguous.”
Abbas was quoted as saying: “With all due respect to the American president, his message was not clear. We want to clear answers to questions we presented to the Americans, especially regarding security, borders and the status of Jerusalem. We continue to insist that any negotiations with Israel be based on recognition of 1967 as the future borders of the Palestinian state.”
Abbas said that the US administration has also failed to give the Palestinians a clear answer with regard to Israel’s policy of settlement construction.
Upon closer examination, it is not “clarity” he is seeking but rather Israel on a platter, served up by Obama. He wants the terms set — “clear” — before he arrives for the signing ceremony. He doesn’t like being told, after 18 months of evading and dodging Bibi’s offer of direct negotiations, that he needs to get in the room with the representatives of the state he will be expected to recognize.
This is one more snub, of course, of Obama, who gave Abbas a nice Oval Office visit and pledged to move the parties to direct negotiations. After a year of suck-uppery to the Palestinians and trying everything he could think of to make Israel cough up more and more concessions, the president’s “peace process” is nowhere. It turns out that the Palestinians really don’t want to make a deal. Who knew? Well, apparently everyone but the White House and the liberal punditocracy. In the meantime, damage has been done to the U.S.-Israeli relationship, the delegitimizers in international bodies have grown more confident, and Iran inches ever closer to acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Really, losing his Palestinian fan club is the least of Obama’s failures.