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With Talks on Ice, Palestinians' Mahmoud Abbas Declares Diplomatic War on Israel
(Washington Post) William Booth - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is launching diplomatic war against Israel, betting on a risky campaign to fully "internationalize the struggle" by moving toward the UN and away from the U.S. The campaign represents a public rebuff of the Obama administration, which has warned the Palestinians that unilateral moves at the ICC and the UN will ultimately fail to get them a state. The Israelis say that it is the Palestinians who have walked away from peace offers and are the intransigent party. They say that if any party to the conflict should be tried for war crimes, it is the Islamist militant group Hamas, which fires rockets indiscriminately at Israeli cities. Critics warn that the Israelis do not like to be pushed and may instead support strong countermeasures. Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN and now president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said Abbas and his Fatah party, which have vowed to pursue nonviolent resistance, have lost ground to their arch rivals in Hamas, which controls Gaza. "The Palestinians believe that they can get some kind of domestic boost by confronting the United States," he said. Robert Danin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state and now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said, "This shift to a more confrontational approach in the international arena is a significant departure for the Palestinians. But the question is: Will it get them any closer to a Palestinian state?...I wonder if they have thought this through."