Israel Matzav

Priorities: As world economy collapses, Obama worries about having to exercise a UN veto

Priorities, priorities.

As the World economy collapses, with the Dow falling over 500 points on Thursday (Hat Tip: Memeorandum), President Obama has his real priorities straight. He is going to spend a good chunk of next week meeting with chief 'Palestinian' negotiator bottle washer Saeb Erekat, and Erekat's colleague Nabil Abu Rudeineh, to convince them to drop the 'Palestinians' unilateral bid for 'statehood' at the UN in September so that Obama won't have to exercise an American veto in the Security Council.

PA sources said that Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat and Nabil Abu Rudaineh, a spokesman for PA President Mahmoud Abbas, will travel to Washington shortly for talks with US government officials on the statehood plan.

The London-based Al-Hayat newspaper quoted a PA official as saying that the US Administration was searching for a formula that would allow the two sides to resume the peace negotiations so that the Palestinians could abandon their statehood plan.

The US has so far failed to come up with such a formula, the official said.

What's worse is that Prime Minister Netanyahu is apparently playing along with this game.

Israeli officials said that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has indicated that he would agree to a formula based on entering the negotiations using the 1967 lines, with mutual agreed swaps, as the baseline, as long as the Palestinians would agree in turn to spelling out that the goal of the negotiations would be two states: a Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state of Israel.

The officials said that intensive discussions on this matter have been held involving Israeli, Palestinian, US, EU and Russian officials. So far the Palestinians have given no sign of a willingness to accept a formula that recognizes Israel as a Jewish state, the officials said.

So is Netanyahu bluffing the 'Palestinians' because he knows that they will never agree that Israel is a Jewish state? Or is he really dumb enough to enter 'negotiations' where the default position is that we go back to the 1967 lines 1949 armistice lines unless the 'Palestinians' agree otherwise?

What could go wrong?

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Nabil Abu Rudaineh, Palestinian state RIGHT NOW syndrome, Saeb Erekat, unilateral concessions, unilateral declaration of statehood, US economy, world economy

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:59 AM