Video Related To: And Abbas Drops the Other Shoe

www.jcpa.org - MK Beni Begin discusses the concessions Israel has made toward negotiations with the Palestinians, including turning over almost all of Judea and Samaria and a building freeze, all which were refused by Palestinian Authority leader Abu Mazen as insufficient. He calls for international pressure to move toward direct negotiations without preconditions. Abbas's Waiting Game By Jackson Diehl Friday, May 29, 2009 Mahmoud Abbas says there is nothing for him to do. True, the Palestinian president walked into his meeting with Barack Obama yesterday as the pivotal player in any Middle East peace process. If there is to be a deal, Abbas must (1) agree on all the details of a two-state settlement with the new Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu, which hasn't yet accepted Palestinian statehood, and (2) somehow overcome the huge split in Palestinian governance between his Fatah movement, which controls the West Bank, and Hamas, which rules Gaza and hasn't yet accepted Israel's right to exist. Yet on Wednesday afternoon, as he prepared for the White House meeting in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City, Abbas insisted that his only role was to wait. He will wait for Hamas to capitulate to his demand that any Palestinian unity government recognize Israel and swear off violence. And he will wait for the Obama administration to force a recalcitrant Netanyahu to freeze Israeli settlement construction and publicly accept the two-state formula. Until Israel meets <b>...</b>