However, this author’s four meetings this week with three of the region’s top Arab affairs experts and a senior Palestinian official reveals that the Palestinian’s have already jettisoned the idea of reaching a compromise with Israel and have already hit cruise control if only to collect on promises of eight billion dollars in international commitments.
I sat in a Tel Aviv meeting on Wednesday with a senior advisor to Mahmaoud Abbas who told a few of us Israelis in no uncertain terms. “PA leader Abbas’s hands are tied." Abbas will not agree to anything less than a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines including Jerusalem.
“The Palestinian pursuit of a two state solution has ended.” They have condemned themselves to a fate worse than the 1948 “Nakba” (disaster). They are now committed to the one state solution: One state for Arabs and Jews.
Apparently the White House and State Department are out of the loop.