Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas postponed a meeting with a senior U.S. diplomat Monday as Arab leaders ponder whether to turn down U.S. President Barack Obama and look to the United Nations to satisfy their demands for a state without negotiations or an agreement with Israel.
David Hale, assistant to U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, was scheduled to meet Abbas in Ramallah on Monday. The meeting had been scheduled and Abbas was fully aware of it, but his aides said it was postponed because of a Muslim holiday that began Monday, according to the Gulf Daily News.
Although the U.S. State Department clearly stated on Monday that diplomats have been updating the PA on developments in the “Clinton freeze” plan, Abbas and his aides have insisted they knew nothing about the proposal.
The Arab League and the PA are reportedly concerned that the proposal for a 90-day non-renewable freeze on all building for Jews in Judea and Samaria includes too many benefits for Israel, specifically a gift of advanced fighter planes and an unwritten guarantee that the Obama administration will veto any attempts in the United Nations over the next year to recognize borders of the Palestinian Authority as a state. However, Likud Minister Uzi Landau stated on Reshet Bet radio station this morning, that these benefits are contingent on reaching an agreement and not on the freeze.
Abbas's strategy the past year has been to prepare the groundwork of international support for a United Nations resolution to recognize the PA according to the borders it wants -- all of Judea and Samaria and all of Jerusalem that was restored to Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967, after being occupied by Jordan, including the Temple Mount and the Western Wall and neighborhoods that are home to 300,000 Jews, nearly half of the capital's population.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s proposal, handed to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during talks with her in Washington last week, has not been approved by the Israeli Cabinet, where there is strong opposition. Nationalists fear that another freeze is a “trap” that will leave Israel without any written guarantees while carrying the danger that the United States will pressure Israel to accept indefensible borders.
Similarly, the Palestinian Authority sees the proposal as a trap that would force it to back down its demands, which it has been hardening the past two years by gaining concessions without satisfying written commitments to stop incitement against Israel.
Officials in the Obama administration have claimed that the PA has halted terror, but the IDF as recently as this week has been forced to act in major Arab cities to arrest senior terrorists.
The new freeze proposal also is a gamble for President Obama, TheChristian Science Monitor reported, quoting Robert Danin, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“My concern is that you’re only making it harder to settle what are likely to be the two hardest issues in these negotiations – Jerusalem and the status of refugees – because you’re reducing your ability to make trade-offs,” said Danin.
He also wondered if “we want this [direct talks between Israel and the PA] more than the two parties most directly involved.”