In the Middle East, They Mean What They Say

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
13 September '10

Jackson Diehl takes a look at the ongoing peace talks: Bibi is talking peace and compromise (Netanyahu “spent the past week talking up a ‘historic compromise with our Palestinian neighbors’ and promising ‘to embrace original thinking’ to achieve it, even as ministers of his own cabinet loudly proclaim their opposition”). Meanwhile, Abbas is acting, well, like the Palestinians have acted for the past 60 years. When presented with the basic requirements of a peace deal (”Israel is recognized as ‘the national state of the Jewish people’ and that a stringent security regime ensures that ‘there will be no repetition of what occurred after we left Lebanon and Gaza’”), Abbas makes clear that the PA’s mindset hasn’t changed at all:

[I]t’s worth noting that Abbas, following his first extended private conversation with Netanyahu in Washington, spent the subsequent days giving interviews to Arab media in which he publicly rejected each of those terms. Palestinians, he said, will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state; they will not allow Israeli forces to remain in the West Bank. In fact, if he’s pressured to make any concessions, he told the al-Quds newspaper, “I’ll grab my briefcase and leave.”

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