Word: netanyahu
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...Israeli leader, for his part, has been quite happy to hold peace talks with Abbas, but not on the terms envisaged by the Palestinian leader or Obama. After years of rejecting the idea of a Palestinian state, Netanyahu has responded to Obama's pressure by accepting the principle of it, but on terms too limited to be accepted by any Palestinian leader. Skeptical of the value of negotiating now over a long-term political settlement and insisting that key final-status issues such as Jerusalem and refugees are not up for negotiation, Netanyahu prefers to focus on what he calls...
...repair relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world. But nine months of intensive diplomacy by his special envoy, Senator George Mitchell, has produced little substantial movement toward reviving negotiations. As he makes his U.N. debut this week, Obama needs the symbolic New York City meeting more than Netanyahu and Abbas do. Indeed, a White House spokesman told the New York Times that the purpose of the meeting is to "show [the President's] determination to get the process moving again...
...problem in getting the process moving again, of course, is that Netanyahu and Abbas don't share a common destination. The Israeli Prime Minister has surged in Israeli opinion polls by pushing back against Obama's settlement-freeze demands, and he is under no domestic pressure to make any concessions. But Abbas' domestic constituency will see the New York City meeting as yet another humiliation inflicted on him by Washington, which has had him pose for endless photographs with an array of Israeli leaders who have no intention of satisfying the basic demands of a peace agreement he could accept...
Each side, predictably, is blaming the other for the impasse. Netanyahu last week warned that Abbas will have to "decide if he is Arafat or Sadat." Sadat is hailed in Israel and the U.S. as a peacemaker, while Arafat has been portrayed as an obstacle to peace. But things look very different to the Palestinians: Abbas has a portrait of Arafat hanging in his office, and seeks to draw authority by claiming to represent his legacy; it's highly unlikely that any Palestinian politician would claim Sadat as an object of emulation...
...make the concessions needed for a credible two-state solution and see U.S. pressure as the only way to achieve that outcome. That's the message in Abbas' refusal to talk in the absence of a settlement freeze. But after demanding such a freeze and then being rebuffed by Netanyahu, Obama finds himself trying to imagine a peace process between two leaders whose visions of peace are incompatible with those of their counterparts. The fact that they'll still show up when Obama calls is simply a reminder that the fate of the peace process may rest largely...