Abu Mazen's Bi-National State Veiled in Racism

Jonathan Dahoah Halevi
shalomlife.com
04 August '10

The Palestinian Authority is under heavy international pressure, mostly American, aimed at facilitating the transition from proximity talks to direct negotiations with Israel. The written message recently sent by President Obama to Palestinian Chairman Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen) indicated that the American administration is not content, to say the least, with the Palestinian leg dragging in the peace process, or with what is perceived to be a lack of appreciation for American pressure on Israel; this has lead PM Netanyahu to accept the two-state solution, and to temporarily freeze settlement activity in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

There is no obvious fundamental change in the Palestinian stance. The Palestinian Authority hesitates and refrains from explicit commitment to direct negotiations without any pre-conditions. Instead, it tries to weather the American demands by raising a new proposal to convene a triangle meeting of Palestine, Israel, and America to discuss the agenda of the negotiations, its legitimacy, and the settlement cessation.

Senior Palestinian officials have said they will also be satisfied if Obama manages to extract an Israeli commitment regarding these issues, or if PM Netanyahu acknowledges the Quartet declaration in Moscow.

During the course of diplomatic activity, Abu Mazen divulged last week, while briefing the Egyptian media in Cairo, his version of the failure of the peace talks with former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and his positions regarding the political settlement of the conflict.

Abu Mazen noted that he almost reached an agreement with Olmert, but the negotiations failed in the last moment because of a disagreement on the ration of the discussed land swap. Olmert proposed 6.5 per cent and Abu Mazen accepted to no more than 1.9 per cent. Abu Mazen said that he demanded to divide Jerusalem, the eastern area of the city to the Palestinians and the western part to the Israelis, and insisted that the refugee problem must be settled in accordance with an Arab peace initiative from March 2002, and UN resolution 194.

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