You Can't Get What You Want

Abbas says that he wants Israel to return to pre-67 borders. Fat chance of that happening, and I don't think the Israelis will stand for a partitioning of Jerusalem despite PM Olmert's signalling that he might cede some parts of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount.

Considering how it was impossible for Israelis to visit the holiest place on the planet when Jordan controlled the Temple Mount from 1948 to 1967, ceding those territories to the Palestinians is a huge mistake.

Israelis were not safe in Gaza, and are not safe in places under PA control because of ongoing activities by Fatah, Hamas, and other Palestinian terrorist groups. The Palestinians have repeatedly used the Temple Mount to stone Jewish parishoners praying at the Kotel (Western Wall).

There is nothing in Abbas's demands that even hints at compromise. He's simply touting the line that Palestinian thugs have demanded for decades. This should be a nonstarter, but even a slight deviation from the "return to pre-1967 position" could result in Abbas or anyone else who proposes such moves ending up on a slab.

Palestinians simply are not prepared to concede anything, and the Palestinian leadership has no reason to make concessions on anything when Israel continues to concede items for them and gets nothing in return except verbal promises to take action that inevitably do not come to pass.

Consider that Israel already handed over Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005 - and the Palestinians promptly turned Gaza into a rocket/mortar launching facility against Sderot and neighboring Israeli communities. Thousands of rockets have been launched against Israel from Gaza.

Before that, Israel turned over civil administrative control over much of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority under Oslo, the Wye Accords, and the Gaza-Jericho accords. Those territories continue to be used as bases of operation for terrorist activities against Israel, despite the PA obligation to stop terrorist activities.

The PA, of course, is riddled with terrorists - Fatah and Hamas comprise the Palestinian "government" and both ultimately seek Israel's destruction - Fatah only does so in a slower timeframe. Both seek to incite Palestinians to the cause of destroying Israel, and this latest "plan by Abbas" does nothing to change matters.

UPDATE:
This is without even the slightest bit of irony - or even factual and historical context provided:

Ahmed Qureia, a former prime minister who has dealt with five Israeli prime ministers during 14 years of failed peacemaking, is trying again with No. 6, Ehud Olmert.

And he's full of optimism, saying the U.S.-hosted Mideast conference in Annapolis, Md., tentatively set for Nov. 26, is a "very, very, very important opportunity." If it fails, he predicts Israelis and Palestinians will perhaps suffer more than in the blood-soaked years following the unsuccessful Camp David summit in 2000.

The reason that the last seven years have been blood soaked was because the Palestinians didn't even bother to counter Barak's overly generous offer at Camp David. Arafat and his goons rejected the offer out of hand without a counter proposal. The intifada launched nearly simultaneously was predicated on the fact that the Palestinians saw the concessions as a sign of weakness and thought that they could strike at Israel and demand even more.

As it is, the Palestinians continue attacking Israel on a near daily basis, and Israel nonetheless pursues a diplomatic channel with the terrorist regime.

The article goes on to talk about rebuilding trust. I'm sorry, but I can't help but laugh at that since the Palestinians have done nothing in which the Israelis can or should entrust their security to. Palestinian terrorists continue attacking Israel and the PA continues to incite Palestinians to violence. Terrorists continue to operate in the West Bank, and it doesn't even begin to address the fact that Fatah doesn't control Gaza - Hamas does - and that Islamist terrorist group seeks Israel's destruction and refuses to recognize any of the prior agreements.

What these talks are about is trying to gain more time for the Olmert government that is beset by scandal and possible indictments over malfeasance on business dealings and nothing to show for its claimed defense of Sderot and the Negev against the rocket barrages or the war last summer with Hizbullah as Goldwasser, Regev, and Shalit are still in the hands of the terrorists that captured them.