Verpasste Chance

"Blame for the absence of negotiations, for the long paralysis in the peace process, doesn’t lie with Abbas. It doesn’t lie with both sides, either. It lies entirely with Netanyahu and his government, and the popular Israeli majority that supports them. Friends of Israel should ask themselves: Why won’t Abbas negotiate with this prime minister when he negotiated intensively with the previous one, Ehud Olmert? (Abbas, of course, also was involved in the peace talks with Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000.)

What’s changed? Everything. Netanyahu’s whole approach to the peace process is that the Palestinians have to forget the ballpark offers that Barak and Olmert made them, forget nine years of intermittent progress in peace talks, and start all over again at square one in negotiations opposite him and his right-wing government. (...) It never should have come to this. Relations with a leader like Abbas should not have deteriorated to this point. The peace process shouldn’t have had to go to the U.N. Israel has a Palestinian partner for peace talks, and this time it is Israel, God help us, that has missed the opportunity.

Journalist Larry Derfner in einem Kommentar für "Forward"zum UN-Antrag der Palästinenser