The sense of "High Hopes" that followed U.S. President Barack Obama's election victory has been quickly replaced with "Big Frustration".
Palestinian negotiators and officials who met Obama and other U.S. officials in New York last week returned home depressed and disappointed.
They came back from those meetings with a vague idea of the outlines of the long-promised Obama peace plan. They say the U.S. administration is pushing for relaunching peace talks without any preconditions, without clear terms of reference and the plan is to get the Israelis and Palestinians to open negotiations on the borders, and lean on the Palestinians to accept a Palestinian state with provisional borders, without an agreement on Jerusalem or the refugees.
A state with provisional borders is an option stated in the U.S.-backed roadmap for peace and has been repeatedly rejected by Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas.
The meeting with Obama was cordial but the Palestinians were told Washington tried but failed to get the Israelis to accept a one-year settlement freeze. The U.S. would nevertheless continue to push for a nine-month freeze. They were also told there is no agreement on clear terms of reference for future final status talks.
"We were told that principles mentioned in Obama's U.N. speech are the new terms of reference. We said at least go back to the roadmap, to (former U.S. President Bill) Clinton's parameters as a basis for peace, for a land swap of some 2 or 3 percent of the land, they said no, go back to the negotiations and discuss the terms," one senior Palestinian official said.
Another Palestinian official said Abbas told Obama he could not return to negotiations on those terms.
The Palestinians are in a new dilemma.
Palestinians today start bilateral talks with the Americans in Washington to try to secure clear terms of reference of future talks with Israel, but they know without American pressure on Israel, they will get nowhere and they will enter into a new vicious circle that will not lead to an end of the conflict or even to stability.
The Palestinian leadership is contemplating not returning to negotiations if they don't get this time clear terms of reference for those talks. They are also considering what type of pressure Obama's adminsitration will exert on the Palestinian Authority if they don't.
If they return to negotiations with nothing agreed and with new settlement construction plans announced every day, the Third Intifada will this time be directed towards Abbas and his Authority, not against Israel.
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