I missed this on Friday:
Abbas proves he prefers posturing to a peace process
PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT Mahmoud Abbas claims to be interested in negotiating a two-state peace settlement with Israel. For two years he has enjoyed the support of a U.S. president more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than most, if not all, of his predecessors. Yet Mr. Abbas has mostly refused to participate in the direct peace talks that Barack Obama made one of his top foreign policy priorities – and now he has shown himself to be bent on embarrassing and antagonizing the U.S. administration.
It’s an editorial in the WaPo, not on a Saturday (the day the fewest amount of people read), chastising Abbas and calling him what he truly is: A man uninterested in peace with Israel. Update:It’s dated Friday, and was posted Friday night, but it is for all intents and purposes Saturday’s editorial. The vote happened Friday.
Mr. Abbas’s stubbornness might seem spectacularly self-defeating – but only if one assumes that he is genuinely interested in a peace deal. In fact, the U.N. gambit allows him to posture as a champion of the Palestinian cause without having to consider any of the hard choices that would be needed to found a Palestinian state. It enables him to deflect criticism from the rival Hamas movement about his friendly relations with the United States. It might even allow him to head off a popular Palestinian rebellion against his own autocratic behavior – Mr. Abbas has failed to schedule overdue elections, including for his own post as president.
The Obama administration has all along insisted that Mr. Abbas is willing and able to make peace with Israel – despite considerable evidence to the contrary. If the U.N. resolution veto has one good effect, perhaps it will be to prompt a reevaluation of a leader who has repeatedly proved both weak and intransigent.
Well, it won’t prompt the Obama administration to do any such thing, but at least the mask is slipping. In the WaPo, too. Holy cow. Is reality creeping into the MSM editorial pages?
The WaPo had an editorial meeting with Abbas a few years ago. He really must have ticked them off – especially Jackson Diehl. They see him as being passive-aggressive with no vision. Arafat, of course, was worse and regularly got understanding from the WaPo. His successor,not so much.
David
How nice. The WaPo has noticed the Palis are uninterested in making peace. It took them only 18 years and thousands of terroist killings since the Oslo Accords to notice that. Better late than never, I suppose. The Times hasn’t noticed yet. Now if we could only get the State Department and the Obama Administration to understand that.