Israel Matzav: Change!

Change!

JPost reports that 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen is disappointed that the Obama administration is not putting enough pressure on Israel. In the same article, Abu Mazen describes his 'negotiations' with former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as follows:

The PA president also revealed that he had an active engagement with former prime minister Ehud Olmert, saying “we didn’t reject his offer, he simply stepped down before we reached the final part of the negotiations. His successor, Tzipi Livni, did not become prime minister and that’s why we never reached an agreement.”

But that's quite different than what he told the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl in May.

In our meeting Wednesday, Abbas acknowledged that Olmert had shown him a map proposing a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the West Bank -- though he complained that the Israeli leader refused to give him a copy of the plan. He confirmed that Olmert "accepted the principle" of the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees -- something no previous Israeli prime minister had done -- and offered to resettle thousands in Israel. In all, Olmert's peace offer was more generous to the Palestinians than either that of Bush or Bill Clinton; it's almost impossible to imagine Obama, or any Israeli government, going further.

Abbas turned it down. "The gaps were wide," he said.

Abbas and his team fully expect that Netanyahu will never agree to the full settlement freeze -- if he did, his center-right coalition would almost certainly collapse. So they plan to sit back and watch while U.S. pressure slowly squeezes the Israeli prime minister from office. "It will take a couple of years," one official breezily predicted. Abbas rejects the notion that he should make any comparable concession -- such as recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, which would imply renunciation of any large-scale resettlement of refugees.

Instead, he says, he will remain passive. "I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements," he said. "Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life." In the Obama administration, so far, it's easy being Palestinian.

So now that Abu Bluff sees that his tactics aren't working, he tries to depict what happened in 2008 slightly differently. Change!

But wait - it gets better.... This is the JPost again.

In an interview published Sunday by Der Spiegel, Abbas told the German magazine he would not change his position and would not agree to resuming negotiations unless Israel completely halts construction in West Bank settlements and recognizes the 1967 borders.

“These are not preconditions, but the first stages in realizing the Road Map and they should have been taken long ago. Unlike Israel, we stood up to our commitment – we recognized Israel’s right to exist and we are combating violent groups. It is now Israel’s turn,” Abbas said.

Abbas expressed his disappointment that as the president of the “strongest country in the world,” Barack Obama was not doing more to pressure Israel.

Well guess what happens when Obama doesn't pressure Israel. Change!

Senior Palestinian sources confirmed Sunday that Abbas has agreed in principle to the U.S. proposal for indirect talks. According to the same sources, Abbas intends to ask for a number of clarifications with the U.S. administration and will consult with Arab leaders prior to giving Washington his final response.

Abbas is inclined to respond positively to the American proposal, as a refusal would shed negative light on the Palestinian position.

...

The proposal relayed to Israel and the Palestinians during Mitchell's last visit to the region, about two weeks ago, involved the indirect negotiations beginning with American mediation. The format will be similar to the indirect talks Israel held with Syria in Turkey, with Mitchell relaying messages to the negotiating teams sitting in separate rooms.

Heh.

Israel Matzav: Change!