Erekat: Israel is not a partner for peace. Meryl: The record’s stuck. The record’s stuck. The record’s stuck.

State-sponsored British anti-Semitism: Britain’s Channel 4 just ran an “expose” on the influence of The Israel Lobby (da-da-DUM!). Wow, what state moneys can buy in Jew-hatred. They were charged with racial hate (or whatever that charge is in Britain) when they ran an expose on terrorists recruiting in British mosques. Any guesses on whether they’ll get charged with inciting racial hatred on this one? Shyeah.

Oh, no way this goes wrong: The CIA is launching a campaign to recruit Arab-Americans. If their screening is as strenuous as the FBI and the Army, we can expect a lot more Major Hasan incidents.

Barry Rubin outlined the elements of Abbas’s strategy:

t’s really funny how the story about Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas supposedly-going-to-call-elections-and-resign story was covered. Everyone in the Middle East knew he wouldn’t resign and he wouldn’t call elections. It was a blatant bid to get something from the Americans and pretend that he was tough. But the Western media reported the story as if it were true.

This technique borrows from Egyptian President (dictator) Gamal Abdel Nasser after he lost the 1967 war. Step 1: Announce your quitting. Step 2: Organize big demonstrations begging you not to quit. Abbas added to this a Step 3: Get Westerners to give you goodies and demand more concessions from Israel so that you’ll stay.

So the media played along and took it seriously. In the process we were given the mainstream view of the Israel-Palestinian conflict within the framework of the Commandment: Thou shalt not criticize the Palestinian side. Well, you can knock Hamas but not the PA. In fact, the more one-sided the reporting, the better.

But it wasn’t long before it was clear he’d stay on as the PA’s head and there won’t be any elections.

If you thought it was over, it isn’t. Today Ethan Bronner of the New York Times writes:

The Israeli security establishment is in a state of alarm over the possible departure of Mr. Abbas, whom it considers a genuine moderate. Some of its top members are urging their government to make far-reaching offers — “not just lifting a few roadblocks,” in the words of one — that would persuade him to stay in power and resume negotiations with Israel on a solution that involves creating an independent Palestinian state.

Palestinian leaders are looking elsewhere for salvation. Aware of their own weakness, but also of rising disillusionment abroad with Israel over West Bank settlement growth and its war in Gaza in January, they are hoping to turn frailty to their advantage by appealing to the international community to come to their rescue.

Note how Abbas’s strategy is stated explicitly. He’s not getting what he wants so he’s using the threat to resign as a cry for help to the international community. The twist here is the “state of alarm” of Israel’s security establishment. Can it be that Israel’s security establishment really fears Abbas’s resignation? One would think like the boy who cried wolf, Abbas doesn’t have much credibility.

Later on Bronner inadvertently touches on the real problem of Palestinian leadership: there’s no real moderation there. Relatively speaking, Abbas is a moderate, but last year he rejected a peace proposal from then PM Ehud Olmert that went beyond Ehud Barak’s proposal to Yasser Arafat at Camp David in 2000. Knowing that Olmert would soon no longer be Prime Minister, Abbas didn’t see the urgency of accepting his proposal. Instead he rejected a peace offer in hopes that the international community would pressure Israel to cede even more!

The problem is that most of the rest of the Palestinian leadership is even more extreme than he is. Here’s more from Bronner:

Mr. Abbas has not groomed a successor. The American and Israeli dream would be Mr. Fayyad, but besides having no political base, he is not a member of Fatah, so Palestinians consider the prospect highly unlikely. More possible, a few say, would be for Mr. Abbas to remain president while allowing Mr. Fayyad to carry out his reform plan.

Two former security chiefs, Muhammad Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub, are also possibilities, although there seems to be no groundswell around them and plenty of opposition. Muhammad Ghneim, a founder of both Fatah and the P.L.O. who came to the West Bank this past summer from exile, is considered a possible place holder if the job suddenly becomes vacant. And Nasser al-Kidwa, a nephew of Mr. Arafat and former Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, is also mentioned by some as a possible future candidate.

But there is no appetite for a succession struggle as everyone waits to see whether the peace process deadlock can be broken.

Those who read Barry Rubin know that the candidate who emerged the strongest from this summer’s Fatah election was Ghneim. Here’s what Prof Rubin wrote about Ghneim (Ghanem):

Ghaneim has a definite appeal for Abbas as ally and successor. He is one of the few remaining original founders of Fatah and has wide contacts throughout the movement.

On the one hand, he possesses Arafat’s seal of approval historically but on the other hand he is so hard-line as to appeal to that powerful tendency in Fatah. In addition, as someone who has been outside the PA politics for 15 years he was seen as a neutral figure in many petty and personal disputes.

But this is not the man to choose if your top priorities were making peace with Israel and maintaining good relations with the West. He is the man you would choose if you intended to reject compromise, rebuild links to Syria and Hamas, and perhaps return to armed struggle in future.

On arrival at the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan on July 29, 2009, just before the Fatah Congress, Ghaneim was picked up by Abbas’ personal limousine, taken to his office, and welcomed in a ceremony.

At the reception, Ghaneim stated: “The struggle will continue until victory” and that if political means did not win Palestinian demands the movement would return to armed struggle. (Al-Hayat al-Jadida, July 30, 2009). It is clear how Ghaneim defines victory and it is not a West Bank-Gaza state with its capital in east Jerusalem living alongside Israel in perfect harmony.

That Ghaneim would give up demands that all Palestinian refugees and their offspring must be allowed to live in Israel or that he would make any territorial compromise, or that he would end the conflict permanently in any peace agreement is extremely unlikely. These are things–all necessary for peace–that even the less extreme Abbas has rejected.

So the problem isn’t that the Israel might lose the one “moderate” peace partner, it’s that such a partner doesn’t truly exist. And even if one wants to point to someone such as Salam Fayyad, the problem is that he has no political base. There’s no real constituency for moderation in the PA.

The media and selected members of Israel’s security establishment can take Abbas’s threat to quit seriously, but in the end it really won’t affect things much one way or another. It’s just one more tantrum.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

It is one of the most watched pieces of real estate in the world, 35 acres where an under-the-breath prayer or a whiff of a rumor can rouse warnings of war.

In both Judaism and Islam, the area known respectively as the Temple Mount and the Noble Sanctuary is considered a formative location. Jews believe it to be the site of Solomon’s Temple and key biblical events. Muslims regard it as the spot where Muhammad was brought by the angel Gabriel before embarking on a trip to heaven to visit the other prophets.

It also remains a flash point, and a series of disturbances there this fall showed just how difficult it will be for Israelis and Palestinians to reach agreement on an area over which they negotiate not just as political entities but also as representatives of two faiths with an often-troubled relationship.

I wish he were stronger in terms of the Jewish claim. Archaeology has confirmed the Temple. It’s more than just a Jewish “belief.”

However later on there are a few things that bother me.

If the Palestinians “want to let go of an area in the West Bank, no one from the outside is going to say anything,” said Abdul Fattah Salah, Jordan’s minister of religious affairs. “But when it comes to Jerusalem, they can’t. It is tied to all Muslims.” The Jordanian ministry employs 500 people who staff the Jerusalem compound.
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Salah said the hope is that if part of Jerusalem becomes the capital of a Palestinian state, Muslims from any country will be able to begin visiting a site where it is considered a special blessing to pray — access that he said Israel is unlikely to grant if it maintains sole sovereignty over the city.

First of all, Schneider lets stand the exaggerated claim of the Muslim attachment to Jerusalem. Yes Jerusalem is holy to Muslims, but for much of Islamic history Jerusalem was ignored. Even the Crusades aroused little interest at first. This leads Daniel Pipes to conclude:

First, Jerusalem will never be more than a secondary city for Muslims; “belief in the sanctity of Jerusalem,” Sivan rightly concludes, “cannot be said to have been widely diffused nor deeply rooted in Islam.” Second, the Muslim interest lies not so much in controlling Jerusalem as it does in denying control over the city to anyone else. Third, the Islamic connection to the city is weaker than the Jewish one because it arises as much from transitory and mundane considerations as from the immutable claims of faith.

The other point Schneider should have challenged Salah on was his claim that until Jerusalem becomes part of a Palestinian state, Muslims from around the world won’t be able to visit it. I expect that Muslims from Arab countries that are hostile to Israel won’t be able to visit Jerusalem easily. So there is a solution. Make peace with Israel. (And of course the Jordanian doesn’t acknowledge that when his country ruled the Old City, Jews were forbidden from visiting their holy site!)

And then at the end of the article Schneider writes:

Given recent history, the fall riots were viewed by some here as a cause for optimism. They were on a comparatively small scale, led to no deaths on either side and, after a tense period from Yom Kippur through late October, appear to have dissipated without consequence.

Far worse has happened: Dozens of people died in 1996 in clashes that erupted after access was opened for tourists to a tunnel that ran on an ancient street alongside the wall. And a visit to the area by former prime minister Ariel Sharon in 2000 helped trigger the multi-year uprising known as the al-Aqsa Intifada.

Let’s give a little more detail as to what happened in 1996 and 2000. Barry Rubin recently recalled:

In 1996, the Israeli government opened a tunnel which tourists could walk through and see certain features of the ancient wall and Jerusalem. Rumors that the Jews were trying to destroy the mosques were orchestrated by the Palestinian leadership with many lives lost and the peace process placed in jeopardy. As a result, too, 85 Palestinians and 16 Israelis were killed, and more than 1,300 people–mostly Palestinians–were wounded, a terrible bloodshed for no rational reason whatsoever.

In 2000, a brief tour of the Temple Mount by Ariel Sharon—he merely walked through for about an hour, looked around, and then left—was the rationale used to set off an intifada that lasted for about five years and cost several thousand lives.

Afterward, Marwan Barghouti, leader of Fatah on the West Bank, described in detail how he used this as an excuse to set off the uprising. This violence took place about the time that President Bill Clinton, with Israeli agreement, proposed the creation of an independent Palestinian state which would, among other things, control most of east Jerusalem.

Schneider uses “erupted” and “triggered” to describe how the violence started in those circumstances. But in both cases as Prof. Rubin observed, the violence was incited. Worse in 2000, the Arafat-PA orchestrated violence came after rejecting a peace offer that would have given the Palestinians significant control over the Temple Mount.

Left unsaid by Schneider and unfortunately not even implicit in his article is that there’s no peace in the Middle East, because the Arabs generally and the Palestinians specifically, refuse to make peace with Israel. Jerusalem might well be a sticking point, but it’s because the Arab world has chosen to make it one, rejecting any compromises with Israel.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

“I can offer you a discount on the headbands,” said Tareq Abu Dayyeh, souvenir-store owner. “They’re just like the kind used by suicide bombers.”

I don’t think of glamorizing suicide bombers as kitschy, tasteless would be a better word. But here’s the gist of the story from the reporter Daniel Williams.

Since then, the shop has been a one-stop barometer of Palestinian fortunes, selling kitsch that chronicles war, political infighting and Gaza’s isolation since 2006, when Israel began to blockade the coastal strip.

When the store opened, it was called the PLO Flag Shop, and the souvenirs reflected hope. Yasir Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, had returned from exile to take control of parts of Gaza and the West Bank. Peace seemed to be on the horizon and in tribute the shop displayed little crossed Israeli and Palestinian flag pins and key chains, Israeli flags and menorahs, the candelabra that is a symbol of Judaism.

A big seller was an inflatable vinyl pillow imprinted with Mr. Arafat’s smiling face. One that was purchased in 1995 deflated after a few months.

Israeli-themed mementos fell out of favor in the late 1990s as peace talks foundered, the Israeli settlements expanded and Hamas carried out a suicide-bomb campaign inside Israel. Posters of Saddam Hussein, who supported Palestinian liberation, were the rage.

If you look for the word “terror” in this article, you won’t find it, though Williams acknowledges a “suicide-bomb campaign.” The problem is that the terror is presented as an afterthought. It’s probably the main reason that the “peace talks foundered.” My guess is that mementos glamorizing terrorists – such as the above mentioned headbands – were very popular sellers, and, maybe, still are.

However, this might be the most telling paragraph:

The upbeat mood did not last. In 2006, Danish flags became a hot item, purchased to torch in protest of cartoons depicting Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, published in a Danish newspaper. That summer, Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia and party, fought a 33-day war with Israel, and Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, became a subject of heroic portrait posters.

What do the Danish cartoons have to do with changing fortunes of Middle East peace? Nothing, but it was an episode of international Muslim grievances against the West. Nasrallah too, fought Israel after Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon and the supposed reason for Hezbollah’s existence disappeared. But Nasrallah is a hero because he attacked Israel with rockets.

The PLO flag does, as Williams say, reflect the recent history of the Middle East, but it is through the lens of Palestinian (and Arab) grievances.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Enter Obama. Rather than adopting a go-slow, build-on-the-past approach to a fragile situation, he did it his way — with a speech. Inadvertently, he exploded two grenades amid the process.

First, he declared the “aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied” — a reference to the Holocaust. By not combining that with an affirmation of the 3½ millennia of Jewish history in the Holy Land, he fed the Arab fantasy that a guilt-ridden West imposed Israel on the Middle East.

Second, he elevated Israeli settlements into a make-or-break issue for peace talks. “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” he said. Yes, past administrations opposed settlement expansion, but it wasn’t a first-tier issue. And every realistic plan for a resolution to the conflict recognizes that Israeli communities comprising 80 percent of the settlers and located near the 1967 borders (actually cease-fire boundaries from the Arabs’ 1948 war of extermination) would be included in Israel in a land swap.

Whereas the Palestinians once conducted talks while settlement construction continued, Obama gave them an excuse to just say no.

This puts a lot of the blame for the currently stalled “peace talks” on President Obama’s miscalculations. Still there’s a more basic miscalculation that all administrations are guilty of. Barry Rubin writes:

The same thing applies to Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas. Even after the United States and Israel announce that Israeli construction will be frozen, Abbas must insist that he can’t even talk to Israel unless not a single cinder block is laid atop another one. He also says that he will hold new elections next January but won’t run in them.

First of all, there won’t be new elections because his Fatah movement will never get a deal with Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and maybe also because Fatah’s afraid it won’t win.

Second, Abbas is trying to use this threat as leverage on the United States to get more. Let’s remember the situation: President Barack Obama wants direct Israel-PA talks and Abbas refuses. Obama made a deal with Israel on freezing construction on settlements, Abbas rejects it.

Once again, this is the farce played out in which everyone pretends Abbas is serious, while Washington pretends that it can get some real cooperation from the PA

But what is triggering Abbas’s action most immediately is the cries of betrayal when he agreed with Obama’s request that the PA not take the lead in pushing the Goldstone report in the UN. Everyone knew that it would pass and that all the Arab and Muslim-majority regimes would support it. Yet Washington wanted to avoid the embarrassment of having one of the two parties it is trying to get to the negotiating table call the other one a bestial war criminal that should be lynched.

Abbas went along for about 48 hours but there was an uproar in Fatah. Why? Because everyone was scoring points by proving they were more militant than Abbas. So Abbas did a turnaround. That wasn’t enough so then he helped provoke riots on the Temple Mount and now is doing this resignation farce.

The President’s audacity got him “nope” from Abbas.

This dynamic is independent of who’s in the White House. In the West, we value moderation; but in the Arab world intransigence s valued. So when the U.S. someone a moderate it has the effect of enhancing his reputation in the West, but damaging it in the Arab world. Until this changes, there isn’t hope for a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

But no one in this group actually questions the premise if Abbas is really the moderate (implicitly) supposed by the question. (To Gerges and Khalidi, presumably he was too moderate.)

Khaled Abu Toameh though, calls the move a “big bluff,” and puts much of the onus on Abbas for his own weakness.

Fatah’s failure to come up with new faces is also seen by many Palestinians as evidence that the faction is not serious when it comes to implementing reforms. With candidates like Muhammad Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub and Nabil Sha’ath, Fatah is certain to lose the vote once again. Decision-makers in the US and the EU have clearly forgotten that these three men were part of the Fatah list that lost the elections to Hamas in 2006. And they appear to have forgotten that Barghouti, who is often described by mainstream media in the US as a popular and charismatic leader, was the head of that list.

(My impression is that Hamas isn’t all that popular right now as it hasn’t succeeded in doing much but making the people of Gaza more miserable.) And of course, how seriously could Abbas’s commitment to fighting corruption be, when his sons benefit from a cellular franchise? This is the way Fatah always did business, giving the favored few, lucrative business deals?

But it is Evelyn Gordon who really blows the lid off Abbas. She actually recalls his record!

Indeed, Abbas’s total lack of interest in a deal was evidenced by his handling of Ehud Olmert’s (overly) generous September 2008 offer, which included 94 percent of the territories, 1:1 territorial swaps to compensate for the remainder, international Muslim control over the Temple Mount, and absorption into Israel of several thousand refugees. Last week, Abbas said that he and Olmert “almost closed” a deal, implying that the current impasse stems from Olmert’s replacement by Benjamin Netanyahu. But in reality, Abbas never even bothered responding to Olmert’s offer until nine months later, long after Olmert had left office — and even then, he did so via a media interview rather than directly. And, most important, he rejected the offer, saying “the gaps were wide.”

Even Abbas’s vaunted opposition to terror has proved false. In 2005, his one year in sole control over the PA before Hamas’s electoral victory, Palestinians killed 54 Israelis and wounded 484, while 1,059 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel from Gaza. Yet not only did Abbas never order his forces to combat this terror; he explicitly and repeatedly refused to do so. He first cracked down on Hamas only in 2007, after its violent takeover of Gaza convinced him that Hamas threatened him, not just Israel. And he recently agreed to end this clampdown under a reconciliation agreement with Hamas.

Now go back, if you wish, and read the New York Times “debate” and you’ll realize it was a less a debate than an agreement (from different perspectives) for more Israeli concessions to an unworthy political hack.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

This peace process movie is not going to end differently just because we keep playing the same reel. It is time for a radically new approach. And I mean radical. I mean something no U.S. administration has ever dared to do: Take down our “Peace-Processing-Is-Us” sign and just go home.

[...] Let’s just get out of the picture. Let all these leaders stand in front of their own people and tell them the truth: “My fellow citizens: Nothing is happening; nothing is going to happen. It’s just you and me and the problem we own.”

Indeed, it’s time for us to dust off James Baker’s line: “When you’re serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix.”

That sounds to me like an endorsement of George W. Bush’s refusal to repeat the Clinton administration’s mistakes. And coming from the guy who threw the Saudi peace plan on the world and pushed it for years as the only real move forward in negotiations—well, let’s just say I’m having a major schadenfreude moment.

Sorry, but I simply have to laugh at this guy. How many times did he swear that the Palestinians really, truly, utterly wanted peace, and that all Israel had to do was give up a lot of land and figure out some way to resettle the “refugees” in order for that to happen? And now? Well, the stardust appears to have fallen from his eyes.

It is obvious that this Israeli government believes it can have peace with the Palestinians and keep the West Bank, this Palestinian Authority still can’t decide whether to reconcile with the Jewish state or criminalize it and this Hamas leadership would rather let Palestinians live forever in the hellish squalor that is Gaza than give up its crazy fantasy of an Islamic Republic in Palestine.

He’s wrong on Israel keeping the West Bank. Israel will give back nearly all of the land to the Palestinians in return for a true peace and recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. But he’s right on the others.

Tom Friedman, a realist at last. And not in the political sense of the word—in the dictionary sense.

During her meeting with the Israeli leader, Clinton praised his offer on settlements, which would freeze new construction but allow already started projects to continue, as “unprecedented.” She did not, however, push him to adhere to the complete freeze she had insisted upon in the past, causing many in the region to question whether the US had dropped the demand.

Since then Clinton has sought to reassure Arab leaders, repeating the praise for Netanyahu’s offer yesterday but stating clearly that it falls short of US goals. In interviews today with al Jazeera and al Hurra, Clinton has reiterated that message.

Today Clinton tacked on an extra stop to her trip. She’s now in Egypt, a country who, along with Jordan, issued a statement on Sunday in defense of Palestinian efforts after Clinton’s remarks with Netanyahu.

She’s kissing up to all of the Arabs for having the temerity to say that Netanyahu is being reasonable. Conversely, the Palestinians are being unreasonable—but heaven forfend that anyone should actually be truthful about the real obstruction to peace in the Middle East.

Here’s a hint: It ain’t settlements.

Palestinian officials on Sunday criticized the United States for what one called “backpedaling” on demands that Israel stop settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, saying the Obama administration’s change of approach on the issue damaged the likelihood of a peace agreement.

“If America cannot get Israel to implement a settlement freeze, what chance do the Palestinians have of reaching agreement” on the even more complex set of issues involved in final peace talks, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said in a written statement.

The thing I like best about all this is that they’re actually correct. It is Obama’s fault, and you can trace it to these exact words from the Cairo speech:

The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. (Applause.) This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop. (Applause.)

There’s a lesson in unintended consequences there. Barry Rubin says that Netanyahu has given Hillary Clinton more than Israel has ever offered regarding the cessation of settlements, but it’s still not enough for the Palestinians—and now Egypt and Jordan have climbed aboard the “absolutely no building, anywhere!” wagon and declared that the Palestinians are right not to negotiate without a complete freeze. But, as Barry Rubin points out:

In fact, at the time it signed the original peace process agreement—often called the Oslo accord—in 1993, that’s 16 years ago—Israel put forward its interpretation of the agreement. It said that there would be no new Jewish settlements and no geographical expansion of existing settlements. But Israel made it clear that it would continue to build apartments on existing settlements. That position was not challenged by the Palestinians at the time and it has never held up talks before now.

In effect, then, Obama has totally effed up the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, by giving the Palestinians a demand that they could latch onto and use as an excuse to refuse so much as talking with Israel. Even the WaPo has noticed:

The comments represent what has been a shift in the dynamics since President Obama took office, with initial pressure on Israel giving way to apparent impatience over the refusal of Palestinian officials to resume peace talks in the absence of a settlement freeze.

The first months of Obama’s administration were marked by sharply worded demands that Israel stop building in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians consider the areas part of a future Palestinian state and say that a halt to settlements on Israel’s part would simply be fulfilling promises already made under previous international agreements.

You know, I think I may start taking back all the bad things I thought about Obama and the Cairo speech. Because clearly, it has shown the Palestinians’ duplicity to all and sundry, and exposed the so-called “moderate” states of Egypt and Jordan for the enablers of the rejectionist philosophy of Fatah and the PA. Even Barack Obama can’t keep ignoring who is truly at fault for lack of progress in the Middle East. Well, okay, he can—but people are going to start laughing at him when he blames Bush for the current impasse.

Update: And on cue, Clinton moderates her statement to please the outraged Palestinians and Arabs.

The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. (Applause.) This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop. (Applause.)

I love the little added applause parentheticals. But you should really listen to the speech to hear the harshness in Obama’s tone when he mentions the settlements. (There is no equivalent harshness when he mentioned the Palestinian obligations for peace.)

In any case, using that speech, the Palestinians promptly inserted a precondition for talks with the Netanyahu administration that they never had in all the years of peace talks: There will be no talking until there is a total freeze on all “settlement” activity, including the building of apartment additions in the suburbs of Jerusalem. And from there, the Palestinians only dug in their heels. Repeated efforts by various representatives of the Obama administration to get the Palestinians to drop their new precondition were met with refusal after refusal after refusal. Obama opened the bottle, the genie got out, and now his administration is trying really hard to get it back inside. And they’re not nearly as smart as Bugs Bunny was. The genie is winning.

The latest iteration is Hillary Clinton’s visit. The Palestinians are being told in no uncertain terms to get back to the negotiating table.

A halt on settlement construction in the West Bank is not a pre-condition for the resumption of talks between Israel and the Palestinians, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday.

“There has never been a pre-condition. It’s always been an issue within the negotiations,” Clinton said about the settlements.

But if you look at those words, and the words of Obama’s Cairo speech, there is a cognitive dissonance that explains why the Palestinians continue to use the lack of a freeze as a reason to halt negotiations. Because the Obama administration opened the door for it use. And the Palestinians have never, ever not used an excuse to refuse to negotiate with Israel.

Responding to Clinton’s remarks, a Palestinian official said Israel must halt settlement building for peace talks to resume.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said: “A settlement freeze and acknowledging the terms of reference is the only way towards peace negotiations.”

Because the Palestinians don’t want to negotiate. They don’t want two states, living side by side in peace. They want a Palestinian state in all of what was the British Mandate of Palestine. And now, the Obama administration has given them their Best. Excuse. Ever. They’re not giving it up anytime soon.

The Obama administration’s Israel policy to date has been a miserable failure. The two sides are no closer to peace than they were under the Bush administration, or even the Clinton administration.

Smart power. Wow. It really doesn’t work very well, does it?