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Heavy Handed U.S. Intervention Has Stalled the Arab-Israeli Peace Process
(U.S. News) Mortimer B. Zuckerman - Why did the Palestinians terminate the Arab-Israeli peace talks? The justification cited was the Israeli refusal to extend the moratorium they had put on construction in the settlements. It is a phantom excuse, the product of heavy-handed U.S. intervention. Both the Israelis and Palestinians have negotiated for almost 20 years without settlement construction becoming a fundamental impediment. A peace agreement was achieved with Egypt without prohibiting settlements. The Palestinians signed the Oslo Accords without a moratorium on settlements and even acknowledged that Israel would be building on the West Bank. All of the Israeli construction put together doesn't even cover 2% of the West Bank. When Obama spoke repeatedly for a construction freeze in the West Bank as a public condition for the renewal of talks, it turned the settlement freeze from a dignified wish into a threshold demand that needed to be met in full. It also set a bar that made it impossible for the Palestinians to compromise. Abbas cannot be less Palestinian than the U.S. president. Why did the U.S. tolerate Abbas' spending the first nine months of the settlement construction freeze equivocating? Then the president publicly demanded an extension ahead of the 10 months, thereby rewarding the Palestinian Liberation Organization for its delay.