The Folly of the Israel-Palestinian Peace Process

Mahmoud Abbas is conducting himself little different than Yasir Arafat. He's openly refused to accept an unprecedented offer for Palestinian statehood, including a limited right of return, because he figured he'd get even more favorable terms once President Obama took office.

In our meeting Wednesday, Abbas acknowledged that Olmert had shown him a map proposing a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the West Bank -- though he complained that the Israeli leader refused to give him a copy of the plan. He confirmed that Olmert "accepted the principle" of the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees -- something no previous Israeli prime minister had done -- and offered to resettle thousands in Israel. In all, Olmert's peace offer was more generous to the Palestinians than either that of Bush or Bill Clinton; it's almost impossible to imagine Obama, or any Israeli government, going further.

Abbas turned it down. "The gaps were wide," he said.

Abbas and his team fully expect that Netanyahu will never agree to the full settlement freeze -- if he did, his center-right coalition would almost certainly collapse. So they plan to sit back and watch while U.S. pressure slowly squeezes the Israeli prime minister from office. "It will take a couple of years," one official breezily predicted. Abbas rejects the notion that he should make any comparable concession -- such as recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, which would imply renunciation of any large-scale resettlement of refugees.

Instead, he says, he will remain passive. "I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements," he said. "Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life." In the Obama administration, so far, it's easy being Palestinian.

That offer was extended by Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Israeli Prime Minister, who was a miserable failure while in office and hoped that a peace deal would be a lasting legacy to make critics ignore his awful handling of Israeli national security.

Abbas is hoping President Obama puts the screws to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is not going to be anywhere near as charitable in his offers.

Of course, what isn't stated in all this is that Abbas would ever accept any deal. No matter what is offered, it will never be deemed sufficient. They will hold out for more - but the ultimate "more" is the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state altogether. There is no interest in a two-state solution, nor even negotiating towards a two-state solution. It's again a case of Israel negotiating against itself, which is a classic legal tactic, but one that has dire consequences to Israeli national security.

Once again, we see that the Palestinians are incapable of proffering a counter proposal to a legitimate offer for peace from Israel. They don't want peace, and will never accept a deal because they think that a better one can be had by waiting out Israel and using international pressure to force still more concessions.

The Olmert deal is different from the 2000 Camp David deal in that Olmert provided a limited right of return, which had been off limits until now in addition to the land concessions.

Still, none of this makes any difference when the Palestinians turn to terrorism instead of proffering a counter proposal. War with the ultimate goal of Israel's destruction is the only thing that they have in mind, and doing so with a multitude of paper cuts is the Fatah approach these days - and on this front, they're winning.