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Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/278295/abbas-strikes-out-elliott-abrams
Abbas Strikes Out
(National Review) Elliott Abrams - The rapturous applause that greeted Mahmoud Abbas at the UN General Assembly was deceiving. The states that swooned when he spoke will never give him a state - nor even the foreign-aid money to pay his delegation's hotel bills. His statehood project depends on Israel and the U.S., and to a lesser extent on the Europeans (and a bit of Gulf Arab financing). His UN gambit has annoyed or offended all of those parties. The Abbas speech was a nasty piece of work filled with harshly worded denunciations. His reference to the "Holy Land" as the home of Jesus Christ and the place from which Mohammed ascended to heaven excluded all references to Jews and Jewish history. The Abbas speech will end up strengthening Netanyahu's tough approach to Israeli security. Abbas' UN ploy may work for him in terms of his own domestic politics - for a while, anyway. Instead of being the man who lost Gaza, he may briefly be the man who "bravely" took the statehood issue to the UN. But he did not take the Palestinians one step closer to peace. The writer was the deputy national security adviser handling the Middle East in the George W. Bush administration.