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Source: http://www.cfr.org/publication/21187/focus_on_west_bank_not_negotiating.html
Focus on West Bank, Not Negotiating
(Council on Foreign Relations) Elliott Abrams interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman - Elliott Abrams, who served as a senior Middle East adviser in the George W. Bush administration, says, "What we have been seeing from Senator Mitchell are 'trial balloons,' such as, 'let's have proximity talks instead of direct negotiations.'" "Proximity talks would be the Palestinians and Israelis in different hotels or different rooms in the same hotel and the Americans would shuttle back and forth. What is ridiculous about that is that these people have been negotiating face to face for twenty years, so to go back to proximity talks is a real admission of failure." "The tragedy here is that this focus on the negotiating table has led the United States to continue, as we did in the Bush administration, to put much too much emphasis on negotiations and too little emphasis on the actual daily work of building a Palestinian state in the West Bank." "Both the Palestinians and Israel will ultimately decide that their relations with the United States are important enough to sit at the table together, but that's not a formula for successful negotiations; that's just a formula for keeping the United States off your back....Our pressure on them, while it leads them to the table, does not lead them to successful negotiations if they're not ready."