But those urging a more modest approach argue that Mr. Netanyahu, the most conservative Israeli prime minister to have embarked on final status talks, is unlikely to offer more than his more centrist predecessor, Ehud Olmert. In late 2008, Mr. Olmert proposed an Israeli withdrawal from about 93 percent of the West Bank and compensatory land swaps. Mr. Abbas, who did not accept that offer, is unlikely to settle for less.

“[U]nilikely to settle for less?” So if having a state is so important why did Abbas reject the 93 percent? Or better yet, if Abbas rejected such a deal, why should he expect better?

Roger Simon:

Now here’s the thought experiment part. I’m assuming most of the readers here — in this case I’d wager 99% of you — have been in negotiations themselves. When you got 98% or even 88% of what you wanted, did you walk away and start a war… okay, just walk away? And if you did, why did you do that … when you were so close to making a deal? You could obviously hang around in negotiations and get most, if not all, of what you wanted.

Well, the answer is — no fair peeking — because you never wanted the deal in the first place.

Now Abbas didn’t start a war. Arafat did that in 2000. But the idea’s the same, given that he was so close how could he reject Olmert? The answer must be that Abbas didn’t want a deal. Nothing’s changed to make him want a deal now. After all, all those sophisticated peace processors have been telling him that Israel needs a deal more than he does, so the failure to reach a deal will never be his failure.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

All Palestinian political factions, bar one, have denounced the direct talks, some in harsher language than others.

Only Fatah, Mr Abbas’s own group, supports direct talks. Even among its members, though, there are plenty of disapproving voices.

Ordinary Palestinians, as well as the political factions, feel they have little influence on the Palestinian leadership’s decisions. The Palestinian polity is broken. There is no functioning parliament. The Gaza Strip and the West Bank are divided under the leaderships of rival factions. The PA government under Salam Fayyad was appointed by presidential decree and elections – presidential, parliamentary and municipal – have all been postponed indefinitely

Related, see Daled Amos.

via Daily Alert blog. From the Daily Globe and Mail.

In his second term, Mr. Netanyahu is strong inside and weak outside. Facing no serious challengers, he enjoys political strength like no predecessor in the past generation. Improved security and an excellent economy support a quiet home front. Looking out the window, however, Mr. Netanyahu sees dark clouds surrounding Israel. The country is increasingly isolated, facing a global fatigue over its endless conflict with its neighbours, and a consensus against occupation, settlement expansion and excessive use of military force. And on the horizon, Iran’s nuclear project is looming.

Mr. Netanyahu returned to power chiefly to save Israel from the “existential threat” posed by Iran. In this environment, he must rely on the United States, Israel’s closest ally and strongest protector. Only Mr. Obama can save Israel from the wrath of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But this protection comes with a price: a Natanz-for-settlements tradeoff.

If PM Netanyahu were to make a deal he would have support to do so. But Abbas has no standing to make a deal. Palestinian nationalism has always been built on a premise on the destruction of Israel, so this is hardly a surprise. As Richard Cohen observed, nothing’s changed in the Arab world regarding the acceptance of Israel. And certainly not in the Palestinian world.

It kind of reminds me Khan’s famous rebuke to Captain Kirk.

UPDATE: A commenter at my blog pointed out that this line was said by Khan to Chekhov while they were still down on the Ceti Alpha six Five. I am s-o-o-o embarrassed.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

And here, too, is the PA openly thwarting President Barack Obama, who publicly bristles at the tiniest Israeli disagreement, yet seems to accept this disrespect without demur.

And it’s not just President Obama.

Roger Cohen:

No American definition of what such trust-undermining acts might be was offered, which is why Erekat pressed Mitchell in their meeting last Friday on what would constitute “provocative actions” by Israel.

But it seems clear that any reprise of the Ramat Shlomo debacle, which infuriated Obama, would meet American criteria. The bottom line to Israel is: Hold the building, hold the tenders and hold any other provocations while Mitchell shuttles.

Thomas Friedman:

President Obama was 100 percent right to call out Israel on its settlement expansion, which undermines the opportunities inherent in this moment.

Both, of course, have been silent about Mahmoud Abbas’s continuting passive aggressive approach to negotiations. Jackson Diehl, to his credit, noticed back in March that what Israel does or doesn’t do; it’s Abbas who refuses to negotiate:

That’s when Rice learned another lesson the new administration seems not to have picked up: This Palestinian leadership has trouble saying “yes.” Confronted with a draft deal that would have been cheered by most of the world, Abbas balked. He refused to sign on; he refused to present a counteroffer. Rice and Bush implored him to join Olmert at the White House for a summit. Olmert would present his plan to Bush, and Abbas would say only that he found it worth discussing. The Palestinian president refused.

This isn’t something new.

The question is when will the Israel bashers start to acknowledge that it isn’t Israel that’s obstructing peace but their second favorite “moderate” Palestinian leader?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel satisfied their short-term political goals with an Oval Office meeting on Tuesday. It is less clear that they achieved much of substance.

So what now?

Mr. Obama is going to have to keep working hard to persuade Mr. Netanyahu that a peace deal with the Palestinians is also essential for Israel’s long-term security, the health of its democracy and its international standing — and not just something he has to try to mollify Washington.

This is funny, because before Netanyahu became Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas rejected a peace deal from then PM Olmert, just as Arafat rejected a peace deal from then PM Barak. If peace is so essential, why the do Palestinian leaders reject offers out of hand? Even if they think that the Israeli offers aren’t sufficient, why are they simply rejecting them rather than bringing counteroffers?

Might it be because they (Abbas and Arafat) view the lack of a peace deal to be to Israel’s detriment (and their advantage)? Certainly if the Times insists that despite Palestinian rejections, Israel is the party needing the deal, they are encouraging the Palestinians to reject future deals too.

The Palestinians need a peace process not peace. The peace process keeps them in the news and makes them indispensible. Peace means that they actually have to govern themselves and stay out of the news. Apparently the editors of the Times are happy to encourage further Palestinian rejectionism.

Finally we get to this paragraph:

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and his government also must do their part, doing more to discourage incitement against Israel — and seriously preparing to make the hard choices that peace will inevitably require.

“[D]oing more to discourage incitement against Israel?” Like the smoker who claims that he’s experienced at quitting because he’s already quit smoking five times, Abbas is expected to “discourage incitement” by the editors of the New York Times. Where exactly have they been these past (nearly) 17 years? Daniel Pipes asks:

Under Yasir Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization notoriously said one thing to Arab/Muslim audiences and the opposite to Israeli/Western ones, speaking venomously to the former and in dulcet tones to the latter. What about Arafat’s mild-mannered successor, Mahmoud Abbas? Did he break from this pattern of duplicity or continue it?

and answers:

Abbas and Fayyad spoke in English to Americans and Israelis, Erekat spoke in Arabic to Palestinians. Both statements cannot be true; one must be a lie. Which one, I wonder?

Palestinians play this transparent and simple-minded double game because it works. Israeli, American, and others too often accept the dulcet tones they hear directly and dismiss reports of harsh words they only hear about. The Palestinian Authority will blithely continue to spew its lies until the world heeds and rejects, for rewarding bad behavior invariably brings on more bad behavior.

Incitement is the official language of the PA. Blithely asking Abbas at this late date to stop incitement is a sign of unseriousness. This probably ought to be one of the major demands of anyone who truly wants peace.

I understand that the editors of the Times don’t trust Netanyahu. During his first term in office he withdrew Israeli forces from most of Hebron. That was a concrete action undertaken in the name of peace. Other than mouthing the right words in English, can the editors of the Times point to any action that Abbas has taken to promote peace?

By their willful ignorance it is clear that the editors of the Times don’t much care about peace, just about pressuring Israel.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Abbas, in the briefing with Israeli journalists Tuesday in Ramallah, said that originally he wanted to hear from Netanyahu whether he was willing to accept the understandings agreed upon by his predecessor, Ehud Olmert.

[...] When no answer from Netanyahu was forthcoming regarding the Olmert offer, Abbas said at Tuesday’s briefing, he sent a message through US envoy George Mitchell saying that he would suffice with an answer on only two of the issues: borders and security.

The answer that he was looking for was regarding this:

At the end of 2008, Olmert offered Abbas 93.5-to-93.7 percent of the West Bank, a one-to-one swap for most of the rest, and an arrangement whereby no one would have sovereignty over the “holy basin” surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City, but rather it would be administered by a consortium made up of the Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Saudis and Americans. Olmert also offered to accept a certain number of Palestinian refugees on humanitarian grounds.

Abbas is pretending that he is absolutely on board with that. But if he is absolutely on board with that, I have two questions. One, why didn’t he accept the offer from Olmert in 2008? And two, why is one of his chief advisors stating in Arabic that the Palestinians will never accept anything other than total control over the Temple Mount?

“In other words, you proposed Palestinian sovereignty, with Israel playing a role in the administrative aspects. In other words, Israel would participate in the administration of the Haram area – unlike the ‘reduced sovereignty’ demanded by Shlomo Ben-Ami at that meeting. In other words, you wanted to let [Israel] play a role, one way or another, with regard to the so-called Holy Basin.”

Saeb Erekat: “They will never have this. Like President Abu Mazen said in front of President Bush and Prime Minister Olmert: I am not in a marketplace or a bazaar. East Jerusalem is an occupied area, just like Khan Yunis, Jericho, and Nablus were. Its status in international law will never be anything else. Therefore, any arrangements regarding East Jerusalem are categorically unacceptable.”

Every time the Arab press gets hold of statements like the above from Abu Mazen, they get a correction from him or his spokesmen. (Note that I say “spokesmen” instead of “spokespersons”—there are no women in important positions in the PA.) And the correction is always basically, “Oh, please. He said that for the suckers who only read English. He hasn’t changed.”

He hasn’t.

Abbas was supposed to follow Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to the White House. But the Israeli leader canceled his visit last week to return to Israel after the raid, which killed nine civilians.

Now this is clearly misleading. “[N]ine civilians?”

David Bernstein went through the competing claims of what happened and concluded:

The first several to land were beaten to pulp and taken hostage, and, at least according to Israeli reports, the oncoming commandos were fired on, and also beaten. At this point, the commandos who were not captive began to use lethal force to defend themselves, rescue their comrades, and gain control of the ship.

So these weren’t exactly innocents. Whether or not the commandos should have been sent in is a separate matter. However to call those killed civilians is misleading.

So Abbas will go first. He and Obama will discuss how Palestinians should proceed with peace talks. But they will also talk about ways to improve the situation in the Gaza Strip, which has been under Israeli blockade in one form or another for five years.

This could be interesting because Aussie Dave noticed that Fatah doesn’t believe that there’s a humanitarian crisis in Gaza:

Azzam al-Ahmed, a top Fatah official in the West Bank, was quoted over the weekend as saying that he was opposed to the lifting of the blockade on the Gaza Strip until Hamas agreed to end the dispute with his faction.

Ahmed stressed that there was no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip because the PA government was sending aid through Israeli border crossings.

Responding to a quote from Der Spiegel:

“Sure, there’s enough to eat in Gaza, but poverty is more than that. Poverty is when the 15,000 people who graduate from the university each year have to beg for jobs as waiters, when an extended family lives in a single room and when the hospital lacks critical drugs. That’s poverty.”

Lee Smith, author of The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations, observed:

There is not an Arab state where this is not true of college graduates – especially now after the financial crisis has affected the Gulf states and made it harder for Lebanese, Egyptians, Syrians, Moroccans etc to find work in the Gulf.

and more generally, Smith continues:

However, this ignorance of what the Arab world looks like is a consistent problem you see in the Western press where reporters on Israeli-Palestinian issues generally have very little experience of the region outside of Israel and the West Bank and Gaza. So instead of comparing Gaza to a Cairo slum like Imbaba, or Ramallah to an Arab capital like Damascus, they are compared to Tel Aviv, West Jerusalem and Western cities.

I would add that Israel also has plenty of homegrown critics who provide reporters with plenty of fodder to bolster these misimpressions.

So perhaps what needs to be discussed then, is not why a chef can’t get the ingredients for beef stroganoff or the overcrowding – i.e. the humanitarian crisis – but why Hamas persists in its rejection of Israel.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

“The second intifada was one of our worst mistakes,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told an Egyptian television station on Wednesday. “[Late Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat didn’t want the intifada to erupt, but he couldn’t stop it,” he added.

Which is, of course, a lie.

As a spy, Mr. Yousef wasn’t fully activated until the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000. A few months before at Camp David, the late PLO chief Yasser Arafat had turned down the Israeli offer of statehood on 90% of the West Bank with East Jerusalem as the capital. According to Mr. Yousef, Arafat decided he needed another uprising to win back international attention. So he sought out Hamas’s support through Sheikh Yousef, writes his son, who accompanied him to Arafat’s compound. Those meetings took place before the Palestinian authorities found a pretext for the second Intifada. It came when future Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Mr. Yousef’s account helps to set straight the historical record that the uprising was premeditated by Arafat.

A few paragraphs later we read:

On Wednesday, Abbas said that “peace can be achieved in no more than one week, but only if Israel is willing.” He added that the establishment of a Palestinian state has been delayed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government. “They must understand that peace is in their interest,” he declared.

Again, this is a lie.

“In November 2008… Let me finish… [Israeli prime minister Ehud] Olmert, who talked today about his proposal to Abu Mazen, offered the 1967 borders, but said: ‘We will take 6.5% of the West Bank, and give in return 5.8% from the 1948 lands, and the 0.7% will constitute the safe passage, and East Jerusalem will be the capital, but there is a problem with the Haram and with what they called the Holy Basin.’ Abu Mazen too answered with defiance, saying: ‘I am not in a marketplace or a bazaar. I came to demarcate the borders of Palestine – the June 4, 1967 borders – without detracting a single inch, and without detracting a single stone from Jerusalem, or from the holy Christian and Muslim places.’ This is why the Palestinian negotiators did not sign…”

Shocker! The Palestinian leader is a serial liar. Unfortunately, lies have been a big part of the Palestinian narrative that is so accepted internationally, even in the West. That acceptances allows the Palestinians to lie with impunity. Abbas is so caught up in a fantasy world, he would not know the truth if it introduced itself by name and shook his hand.

These lies go back to the very beginning:

The disputed territories, together with the territories that are now Israel and Jordan, were originally (in Biblical and post-Biblical times) Jewish kingdoms, and for most of the last seven centuries part of the Ottoman Empire. After the defeat and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the First World War, the League of Nations divided most of its former possessions in the 1922 peace conference. The Arabs were granted rights to most of the formerly Turkish-controlled lands, to an area that was 500 times larger in size than the small area reserved for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The British received an international mandate over Palestine because they undertook to establish a Jewish national home there, which the League considered as an act of “restoration” of ancient Jewish rights to the land — rights that outweighed any Arab claims based on later conquest and residence.

At first, the Arab representatives to the Versailles conference gladly accepted this division. It gave them control over vast areas lost centuries ago, without requiring them to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of soldiers, as the Allies had, to liberate these lands from Turkish dominion. They did not then consider the tiny sliver of South Syrian wasteland, known to Jews as Judea and Samaria and to the Europeans as the Holy Land, of any significance, politically or religiously, and were happy to give it up in exchange for what they so surprisingly gained. The Emir Faisal, who represented the Arabs, signed a draft agreement with the Zionist movement, welcoming the Jews back to their homeland and pledging cooperation.

So the disputed territories of the West Bank and the Gaza strip were never “Palestinian lands” — neither as national patrimony nor as private property. In fact, until the institution of the British mandate, the Holy Land never had a separate political identity or a distinct people inhabiting it. It was a neglected province of South Syria, whose few and destitute Arab inhabitants considered themselves South Syrians. As Bernard Lewis notes, “From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries… within a larger entity” of Syria.

Indeed, to date, 93 percent of the land in what was the British Mandate — including the lands of the West Bank — are still government-owned. They were so despoiled, malaria-infected, and sparsely populated that no private owners evinced any interest in owning them, so they were kept by the sultan and then inherited by the British mandate in safekeeping for the Jews.

Some are gross exaggerations:

Jibril Rajoub (March 30, on MAHAD TV, a local television station in Ramallah) accused Israel of carrying out a “massacre,” executing 30 Palestinians in Ramallah. The announcement was also broadcast on Al Jazeera and other stations.

The reality, of course, is different: in battles which took place on that day in Ramallah, 9 Palestinians were killed – all of them armed.

and echoed even to this day in different contexts.

Some are used to undermine Israel’s legitimacy.

The big, compelling reason people who claim to be ‘friends’ of Israel are pressuring them to give up the country’s heartland to the Arabs is the so-called demographic bomb..the idea that the Arab birthrate is rapidly overtaking the Jewish one and that Israel had better do this now or face being a minority in the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

It’s a myth, as I’ve discussed before and anyone who looks at the actual numbers ought to realize it out of hand.

Barry Shaw is correct:

A fiction has been allowed to take hold. This fiction is known as the Palestinian narrative. It is the creation of a myth that has been told repeatedly so many times that it has been accepted as fact.

The falsehoods have been regurgitated endlessly in the media as to become the standard mantra. The message has become the rallying cry around which support groups are formed. Immense budgets are given to forward part of the agenda that is contained in the narrative. Activists take to the podium, the media, the unviersities, and to the streets. Any voice that challenges the veracity of the campaign is muted, ignored, suppressed, and even impeded with violence.

The accepted narrative is used to criticise, condemn, delegitimise, and even question the validity of the other side.

I represent the other side. I now say enough! Enough of the lies! It is time to fight back! It is time to expose the lies. It is time to expose the truth. Let’s rip the narrative to pieces, bit by bit.

And rip it to pieces, is exactly what Mr. Shaw does. Read it.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Why is the proximity-talks charade necessary? Because currently, Obama lacks both public and congressional support for moving beyond mere verbal hostility. If he didn’t realize this before, the backlash to his March temper tantrum over Ramat Shlomo would certainly have convinced him.

So he needs to up the ante by painting Israel’s government as responsible for torpedoing a key American foreign-policy initiative — one he has repeatedly framed as serving both a vital American national interest and a vital Israeli one. He could then argue not only that Israel deserves punishment but that such punishment would actually serve Israel’s interests.

To avoid this trap, Jerusalem must launch its own PR campaign in America now to put the focus back where it belongs: on Palestinian unwillingness to accept a Jewish state. For if Israel lets Obama control the narrative, the public and congressional support on which it depends may be irretrievably undermined.

Arlene Kushner gives a number of examples where Israel has failed to “control the narrative.”

The Arabs spoke about the ’67 “border” and there was no clear and immediate Israeli government retort – repeated as often as necessary – that the ’67 line was an armistice line and not meant to be permanent. By default, if nothing else, we left the impression that behind the ’67 line was where we most properly “belonged.” The flip side of this was that everything on the other side of that line was “Palestinian.”

When the Arabs spoke about “Arab east Jerusalem,” we did not forcefully clarify the fact that part of Jerusalem had a predominantly Arab population only because Jordan had thrown out every Jew, and that this very area was actually the heart of Jewish heritage. We didn’t tell our history and make our claim clear.

The Arabs have represented UNRWA as being a humanitarian agency that helps the disenfranchised “Palestinian refugees” survive until they can “return” to Israel. Did we ever energetically expose the fact that UNRWA’s rules are different from the rules for all other refugees in the world, who are managed by UNHCR? Don’t be silly.

These are all approaches for Israel’s PR.

There’s one more thing, something that Daled Amos has picked up on.

To present the appearance of a decision, Mahmoud Abbas added members of the Fatah Executive Committee to the meeting.

Fatah official Nabil Abro confirmed that there was no quorum at the PLO meeting, and that its decision had no legal standing.

It would be comparable to walking into a department store with a maxed out credit card. You could go through the motions of making purchases, but in the end when you check out, the credit card reader will inform the clerk that you are not authorized to make any purchases and he’ll send you on your way.

It’s one thing to say that these talks are designed to fail. It’s quite another when one side ensures that it will fail.

The administration’s view on the proximity talks is:

The State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, released a statement warning both sides that “if either takes significant actions during the proximity talks that we judge would seriously undermine trust, we will respond to hold them accountable and ensure that negotiations continue.”

So aside from the historical points that Israel needs to make, will Israel (and its supporters) make the point that Abbas has gone in with no standing? And if they do, will the American government “hold [him] accountable” for undermining trust?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

INDIRECT TALKS between Israelis and Palestinians appear finally set to begin, after a two-month delay that showed the Obama administration’s diplomacy at its worst. The trouble started with an errant announcement by Israel of new housing construction in East Jerusalem; President Obama chose to escalate what could have been a blip into a public quarrel, in the apparent hope of extracting a series of concessions from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The editorial also observes an irony:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas seemingly wants to postpone that day as long as possible. He has insisted on indirect talks even though he has participated in direct negotiations with Israeli leaders for two decades; in 2008, he refused to take up a far-reaching peace offer from former prime minister Ehud Olmert. The Palestinian leader now appears to be counting on the Obama administration to do his negotiating.

This analysis of the situation is excellent. The editorial, though, disappoints towards the end:

It’s true that Mr. Netanyahu’s current right-wing coalition is unlikely to accept some of the terms that would be necessary for peace, such as Palestinian sovereignty over part of Jerusalem. Even his current defense minister says Mr. Netanyahu needs to form a more centrist government.

What is “necessary for peace?” The terms necessary for peace were basically those offered to Abbas by Olmert that, the editorial noted, was rejected by Abbas. So the Post is advocating rewarding Abbas for his obstructionism – he gets the same deal that he rejected – and blames it on Israel. But as the Post noted Abbas wishes for the Americans to do his negotiating for him. And yet the Post says to indulge him.

The Post’s focus on the current Israeli government is misleading for other reasons. For one thing it is not “right wing.” Perhaps it is further to the right than the previous government had been, but the government represents a consensus of the Israeli public.

Second of all, nothing at all is mentioned of what wing the Palestinian government consists of. So let’s go back a year to an interview about the rejected Olmert offer. Here’s Saeb Erekat:

“They will never have this. Like President Abu Mazen said in front of President Bush and Prime Minister Olmert: I am not in a marketplace or a bazaar. East Jerusalem is an occupied area, just like Khan Yunis, Jericho, and Nablus were. Its status in international law will never be anything else. Therefore, any arrangements regarding East Jerusalem are categorically unacceptable.”

This is not the language of a moderate. This is the utter rejection of compromise. And while the Post is very good in exposing Abbas’s cynicism, it doesn’t recognize his intransigence.

In a similar vein, Barry Rubin wrote:

What is needed to understand the issue is precisely what is not presented by policymakers, academics, and all-too-much of the mass media: The PA neither wants nor is capable of delivering a compromise peace agreement.

Radicalism within its ranks, in public opinion, and the ever-present challenge from Hamas ties the hands of leaders who are not so moderate themselves.

Belief that if they continue the struggle or keep saying “no” or subvert Western support for Israel they will get everything they want without giving up much is too tempting.

Prof Rubin’s conclusion is that peace is not at hand but negotiations for a better working relationship between Israel and the PA could be useful.

This is the critical element that the Post misses. It is still looking at a peace deal mostly dictated by Palestinian demands. Until the Palestinians change, peace is just not possible.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

But the Obama administration is Israel’s friend: Joe Biden strongly condemned the announcement of new buildings in east Jerusalem, an area that the Palestinians had already agreed was going to be Israel’s. No word yet on whether the White House is going to condemn Iran for once again threatening to destroy Israel. Also no condemnation of the Egyptian murders of Sudanese refugees trying to escape to Israel. But boy, can the Obama administration tell it to Israel or what?

But the Palestinians want peace: So, if you’re committed to peace, you should be committed to peace because, well, war is bad, right? Everyone seems to think so. And yet, Mahmoud Abbas said in response to Joe Biden’s statement that the Pals deserve a “viable state” that he was committed to peace for a different reason:

Abbas, for his part, urged Israel to commit to the peace process. “The Palestinians remain committed to peace as a strategic choice,” he said.

What that strategy is, he did not elaborate. You need to read what he says to the Arabic press for that. Here’s a hint: It’s a two-part strategy, and the second part is “from the river to the sea.”