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Netanyahu and Obama on the Brink - Again

(Washington Post) Jackson Diehl - Both sides agree that the settlement moratorium issue is purely symbolic. No Israeli settlement construction that occurs in the next year - the term set for reaching a peace agreement - will have a material impact on the final agreement. Both sides say they want the negotiations to continue. So why might settlements kill the talks? The main reason, in my view, is that the Obama administration has once again chosen to ask Netanyahu for an unnecessary concession - and one he may be unable to deliver. Netanyahu finds himself in a familiar bind. When he last led an Israeli government, in the late 1990s, he also came under crushing U.S. pressure to make concessions in an earlier round of peace talks. When he did so, his allies deserted him, his government fell, and he lost the subsequent election. So the prime minister is unlikely to accept the deal with the U.S. unless he can persuade his coalition partners to go along. Another U.S.-Israel crisis is probably what Abbas is hoping for - and why he has taken a hard-line position on the settlement issue. The Palestinian president has engaged in negotiations with Israeli governments for years without demanding any such freeze. All along, Abbas has shown scant interest in these peace talks. He turned down a far-reaching peace offer from Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert. If he were genuinely interested in reaching a peace settlement with Israel, he could set aside the settlement issue. So why has the Obama administration chosen to focus its diplomacy on extracting a purely symbolic but next-to-impossible concession from Netanyahu?
2010-10-08 09:36:16
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