WarSclerotic

Obama makes a pilgrimage to Riyadh – Israel Hayom.

By Zalman Shoval

Toward the end of World War II, then-U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz aboard the USS Quincy, which was anchored at Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal, and forged the U.S.-Saudi Quincy Agreement, based on the idea of security in exchange for oil.

Palestinians reject Israeli proposal as ‘blackmail’ – Ynet.

Proposal reportedly includes release of 420 additional prisoners chosen by Israel, and partial settlement freeze that doesn’t include East Jerusalem, existing tenders.

AFP
Latest Update: 03.31.14, 20:17 / Israel News

The Palestinians have rejected an Israeli proposal to extend the crumbling peace talks beyond April 29, saying it was akin to “blackmail,” an official in Ramallah told AFP on Monday.

“Israel is practicing a policy of blackmail and linking its agreement to releasing the fourth batch of prisoners with the Palestinians accepting to extend the negotiations,” the official said following a late-night meeting between the two sides and US envoy Martin Indyk.

The Israeli proposal, the Palestinian source said, “included the release of 420 other prisoners chosen by Israel, not including those convicted of serious crime, sick prisoners, women, children or leaders like Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Saadat.”

This offer also included a partial settlement freeze, but not in East Jerusalem or for tenders already launched, the sources said.
A source close to the talks told Reuters that under the proposed arrangement to extend peace talks, Jonathan Pollard, a former US Navy analyst caught spying for Israel in the 1980s, could be released by mid-April.

But the White House said it had no new information to offer on Pollard.

“He is a person who is convicted of espionage and is serving his sentence, and I don’t have any update on his situation,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters when asked whether Pollard’s release was something that could be offered as an incentive to Israel.

US Secretary of State John Kerry broke from his travel schedule for the second time in a week to return to the Middle East on Monday to discuss fragile peace talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

“After consulting with his team, Secretary Kerry decided it would be productive to return to the region,” State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki said.

He intends to meet with both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Monday night, and return to Brussels for a NATO meeting.

Kerry had interrupted a visit to Rome last week to go to Amman for talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to try to convince him to prolong the talks beyond an end-April deadline and to press Israel to release the prisoners.

Officials said he was expected to travel to both Israel and the Palestinian territories in the coming hours

The fate of the US-brokered peace process could be decided within days, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this week, warning that “either the matter will be resolved or it will blow up”.

Netanyahu’s remarks to ministers from his Likud party came as US officials were working around the clock to prevent a collapse of the negotiations over a dispute about Palestinian prisoners.

“In any case, there won’t be any deal without Israel knowing clearly what it will get in exchange,” Netanyahu said.

According to a Palestinian official who spoke with AFP, Israel presented Abbas with a draft agreement on Sunday to push forward with the talks. Abbas was to examine the proposal, he said.

Israel did not make good on its commitment to free 26 Palestinian prisoners on March 29, a key plank in the original US-brokered terms to relaunch the peace process, citing lack of progress in talks, which Israel claims was a condition for the release.

Under the deal that relaunched the peace talks, Israel agreed to release 104 prisoners, held since before the 1993 Oslo peace accords, in exchange for the Palestinians freezing all efforts to seek further international recognition.

So far, Israel has freed 78 of them in three batches, and the last group – which the Palestinians insist includes 14 Arab Israelis jailed for nationalist attacks – was to have been released on March 29.
 
Israel, on Friday, informed the Palestinians it would not free the, with the US State Department confirming it was working “intensively” to resolve the dispute.

The Palestinians say they will not even consider extending the talks without the prisoners being freed, but Israel has refused to release them without a Palestinian commitment to continue the talks, prompting a fresh crisis of confidence.

“The ball is now in Israel’s court,” Issa Qaraqaa, the Palestinian prisoners’ minister, told Voice of Palestine radio, saying the leadership was expecting an answer from the Israeli government within 24 hours.

“We agreed to the fourth batch,” Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz told reporters on Sunday, while stressing it would not happen as long as Abbas was preparing to “blow up the negotiations” the very next day.

First Published:  03.31.14, 18:32

The Obama Doctrine of Selective Memory, Commentary Magazine, Seth Mandel, March 31, 2014

(A commitment made by the U.S., accepted and then acted upon by another nation, in reliance on the good faith of the U.S., is meaningless to the Obama Administration if (a) it does not like it and (b) it is unenforceable. — DM)

The Obama administration’s disastrous policies toward Israel were predicated on ignoring, and at times outright falsifying, history.

On June 17, 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said something strange. On the topic of a deal struck on settlement construction between George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon, Clinton said: “In looking at the history of the Bush administration, there were no informal or oral enforceable agreements. That has been verified by the official record of the administration and by the personnel in the positions of responsibility.”

It’s important to clarify what is “strange” about this comment. It was a strange thing to say because it is flatly untrue: the agreement most certainly existed, and was put to writing. But it was not strange that Clinton was the one to say it: as Omri Ceren meticulously explained for the magazine in May 2012, the Obama administration’s disastrous policies toward Israel were predicated on ignoring, and at times outright falsifying, history.

Sharon made real strategic concessions to boost the peace process at great political and personal cost because he knew he had America’s support. When Obama came into office, American allies learned the hard way that the White House was no longer bound by such agreements, regardless of the danger it put those allies in. Ukrainian leaders now appear to be running into the same problem.

According to the Budapest memorandum of 1994, Ukraine would give up its nukes in return for the recognition and maintenance of its territorial integrity. That ship has very clearly sailed, since the United States is now asking Vladimir Putin’s Russia to please only take from Ukraine that which they have already pilfered. Putin is considering this request–which is exactly what it is: a request. Thus, Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” does not, at the moment, exist in any meaningful sense.

Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, has taken to the Daily Beast to describe the Budapest memorandum in terms nearly identical to the way the Bush-Sharon letter was described by those who wanted Obama to respect the promises of the White House. When Clinton denied an agreement that plainly existed, she tried to hedge, in part by saying she found no “enforceable” deals. As Elliott Abrams noted in the Wall Street Journal at the time: “How exactly would Israel enforce any agreement against an American decision to renege on it? Take it to the International Court in The Hague?”

Gelb acknowledges that the Budapest deal does not specifically obligate America to use force against Russia to repel its Ukrainian adventure. But Gelb wants the administration to stop insulting the intelligence of the Ukrainians:

The Budapest document makes sense historically only as a quid pro quo agreement resting upon American credibility to act. The United States cannot simply walk away from the plain meaning of the Budapest Memorandum and leave Ukraine in the lurch. And how would this complete washing of U.S. hands affect U.S. efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, supposedly a top national priority? Why should any nation forego nukes or give them away like Ukraine, if other nations, and especially the U.S., feel zero responsibility for their defense? It’s not that Washington has to send ground troops or start using its nuclear weapons; it’s just that potential aggressors have to see some potential military cost.

And that’s the consequence of the administration’s penchant for selective memory in foreign affairs that Obama brushed aside when it came to Israel. It’s not about whether Obama would or would not have signed such a deal himself. It’s about whether American promises evaporate every four or eight years.

The obvious rejoinder is that presidential administrations cannot be bound by every political or strategic principle of their predecessors–otherwise why have elections? True, but the question is one of written agreements, “memoranda,” and understandings, especially those offered as the American side of a deal that has been otherwise fulfilled. Sharon pulled out not just of Gaza but also parts of the West Bank and made concessions on security in both territories he was hesitant to offer. He held up his end of the bargain, and Israelis were only asking that the administration hold up Washington’s.

That’s the point Gelb is making on Ukraine, and it’s an important one. He is saying that the United States’ decision on how to respond to Russia’s aggression should not be made in a vacuum. This may bind Obama’s hands a bit, but there is danger in reneging on this agreement. It’s a danger that was mostly ignored when it came to Israel. But now it’s clear that this is a pattern with Obama, and that American promises are suspended on his watch. It’s no surprise that the world is acting accordingly.

Report: Syria deploys anti-aircraft missile batteries along Turkish border – Jerusalem Post.

“Syria is ready to deal with any hostile Turkish plane that enters Syria’s airspace,” Syrian army sources say.

By ARIEL BEN SOLOMON 03/31/2014 16:30

Syria deployed anti-aircraft missile batteries along the Turkish border in what seems to be a response to an incident last week when a Turkish fighter jet shot down a Syrian plane, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported.

Syria deployed the anti-aircraft weapons and “is ready to deal with any hostile Turkish plane that enters Syria’s airspace,” sources from the Syrian army and Hezbollah told Al-Rai on Monday.

Meanwhile, Syria’s Minister of Information, Omran al-Zoubi, criticized Turkey in an interview on Syrian TV Sunday evening, saying that the country is facilitating the continual entry of armed terrorist groups into the Kassab area in Latakia, the Syrian Arab News Agency SANA reported on Monday.

Latakia is a stronghold of Bashar Assad’s regime.

Zoubi accused some Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey of backing terrorism.

Syrian air defense systems have “harassed” Turkish F-16 fighter jets patrolling their own airspace by repeatedly putting them under “radar lock”, suggesting they were about to be fired at, the Turkish military said on Thursday.

The incident, which took place on Wednesday, comes only days after Turkey downed a Syrian warplane that Ankara said had violated its airspace, in an area where Syrian rebels have been battling President Bashar Assad’s forces.

Reuters contributed to this report.

PM: No new prisoner release without something of value in exchange – The Times of Israel.

Netanyahu says any further deal would need government approval; issue likely to be resolved in days

By Gavriel Fiske March 30, 2014, 12:07 pm

Israel won’t release additional Palestinian prisoners without receiving something of value in return, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, addressing a weekend report that Jerusalem had offered to free up to 400 additional long-serving prisoners in exchange for Palestinians agreeing to continue talks past their April 29 deadline.
The prisoner issue will be resolved within a few days, when it “will be closed or it will blow up,” Netanyahu said, addressing a meeting of lawmakers, many of whom are opposed to releasing prisoners, held before the regular weekly cabinet meeting.
“In any case, there won’t be any deal without receiving something of clear value [in return],” the prime minister added.

Any deal involving a further prisoner release would be brought to the government for approval, Netanyahu added, and said the deliberations around the prisoners release could go on for several days.

President Shimon Peres said Sunday that in his estimation there would be developments in the peace talks by Sunday evening or Monday morning, and added that both sides were working hard to overcome the obstacles. Peres addressed the controversy from Vienna, where he was beginning a three-day state visit in Austria.

On Saturday, Jerusalem refused to release a batch of about 26 Palestinian inmates who were supposed to be set free at the end of March as per an original understanding between Jerusalem and Ramallah at the start of peace talks in August.

The release was to include 14 Israeli-Arab citizens, which has caused consternation among some members of the government. Israel has refused to release the 26 unless talks, which are due to end in April, are extended.

On Saturday, it was reported by The Times of Israel that Israel had offered to release up to 400 prisoners, to be chosen by Israel, in exchange for an extension of the talks and a pledge by the Palestinians not to take unilateral action at the UN.

With the talks teetering on the brink of collapse, Washington has been fighting an uphill battle to coax the two sides into accepting a framework proposal which would extend the negotiations beyond April to the end of the year.

But the matter has become tied up with the fate of the veteran Palestinian prisoners whom Israel was to have freed this weekend under terms of an agreement which brought about a resumption of talks.

Israel on Friday informed the Palestinians via a US mediator that it would not release the fourth and final batch of prisoners, with the US State Department confirming it was working “intensively” to resolve the dispute.

The Palestinians say they will not even consider extending the talks without the prisoners being freed, but Israel has refused to release them without a Palestinian commitment to continue the talks, prompting a fresh crisis of confidence between the parties.

Issa Karawe, the Palestinian prisoners minister, on Saturday told AFP that the crisis was likely to be resolved quickly.

“There are efforts to solve the crisis and I believe that in 24 hours everything will be clearer,” he said.

Under a deal that relaunched peace talks last July, Israel agreed to release 104 prisoners held since before the 1993 Oslo peace accords in exchange for the Palestinians freezing all efforts to seek further international recognition.

So far, Israel has freed 78 of them in three batches, and the last group was to have been released on March 29.

Obama tells Saudi king U.S. will not agree bad deal with Iran – Chicago Tribune.

(More political comedy. – Artaxes)

Obama’s foreign policy failures lead to disaster at UN, Fox News, Anne Bayefsky, March 31, 2014

(The U.N. left its temporary home at Lake Success, N.Y. in 1951. Success waited several years to  leave the U.N., but eventually did so. Success also seems to have left the United States of Obama (“USoO”), still claimed to be Israel’s closest and most important ally. Israel, however, has become the USoO’s sacrificial goat. — DM)

 [T]he Council had no trouble adopting lengthy detailed resolutions condemning Israel for imaginable offences of all kinds – five, to be precise.

That is five times more than any other country on Earth. Just eight other states, from the remaining 192 UN members, were targeted by the Council with one resolution each: Guinea, Iran, Burma/Myanmar, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Sri Lanka and Syria.

FILE — March 12, 2014: Ben Emmerson, UN Special Rapporteur on Counter Terrorism and Human Rights speaks during a press conference (AP PHOTO/KEYSTONE,MARTIAL TREZZINI)

President Obama’s hemorrhaging foreign policy is creating an increasingly embarrassing mess at the United Nations. A four-week session of the U.N.’s top human rights body, the Human Rights Council, ended in Geneva on March 28, 2014, with a series of humiliating defeats for the president’s calling card of indiscriminate engagement.

Joining, and legitimizing, a U.N. Human Rights Council with no human rights conditions for membership was one of President Obama’s first foreign policy moves.  Hence, the United States was elected to the Council in 2009, re-elected in 2013, and currently sits alongside such human rights luminaries as Russia, China and Saudi Arabia.

This session took place against the backdrop of Russia’s aggressive takeover of parts of a sovereign country, in gross violation of the human rights of Ukrainians. And yet the Council itself couldn’t manage a peep.

A U.S.-backed resolution at the U.N. General Assembly adopted on March 27, 2014, criticized Russia, but failed to take what would have been the truly isolating step of removing Russia from the Council.

So what did the Council do while it was in session?

For the first time, the Council adopted a resolution on “remotely piloted aircraft or drones” – including those which are unarmed. Creatively, the resolution “expresses concern” that such aircraft “undermine religious and cultural practices,” thus transforming perpetrators into victims.

The Obama administration overwhelmingly lost the vote on this resolution, 27 in favor to 6 against.

The European Union was split, with Germany insulting President Obama by merely abstaining.

Back in 2009, the Obama administration had touted its close working relationship with Egypt and its ability to defeat the dangerous effort by Islamic states to invoke religion as an excuse for limiting free speech.

Today, U.S. diplomats work the free speech resolution alone. And the only way it passed, was to add a sly reference to another resolution that attacks “abuses of freedom of expression that constitute religious discrimination.”

Team Obama also sat silently by while the Council adopted another Islamic group attack on free speech. The phony title of their resolution was: “combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against, persons based on religion or belief.”

Other Obama losses on “human rights” resolutions aimed at Western pocketbooks included: a Cuban-led resolution on “the effects of foreign debt,” and an African-led resolution on “non-repatriation of funds of illicit origin.”

The Russians succeeded in passing a resolution on the “integrity of the judicial system,” allegedly directed at “upholding the rule of law and democracy.” Co-sponsored by countries that do exactly the opposite, like China, Cuba, North Korea and Sudan, the United States was the only country to vote against this Russian initiative. The entire European Union abandoned the Obama administration and merely abstained.

After Cuba thundered “we the states of the south continue to be plundered,” the Council enthusiastically adopted a Cuban resolution on the “promotion of a democratic and equitable international order.”  The decision demands that the Council “expert” charged with supporting the resolution’s implementation receive “all necessary human and financial resources” from the UN.  American taxpayers are on the hook for pushing Cuba’s idea of democracy.

Iran led the charge for a resolution on “enhancement of international cooperation in the field of human rights.”  The European Union joined consensus “in a spirit of compromise.” The Obama administration said nothing and did the same.

The Council successfully managed to renew the job of human rights investigator on Iran. But in the words of the European Union, the only way this result occurred was by adopting “a short procedural text” containing not a single word of substantive criticism of human rights in Iran.

By contrast, the Council had no trouble adopting lengthy detailed resolutions condemning Israel for imaginable offences of all kinds – five, to be precise.

That is five times more than any other country on Earth. Just eight other states, from the remaining 192 UN members, were targeted by the Council with one resolution each: Guinea, Iran, Burma/Myanmar, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Sri Lanka and Syria.

Contemplate the billions ignored.

Then consider the Council’s resolution on the “Syrian Golan.” The Council declared that it was “deeply concerned at the suffering of Syrian civilians in the occupied Syrian Golan due to the…violation of human rights by Israel.” The resolution didn’t mention the suffering of Syrian civilians due to the violation of human rights by Syria.

The fact that Syrians flee to the Golan in order to be saved by Israeli doctors from the wounds inflicted by their own government was also mysteriously missing. The Syrian Golan resolution even complained that because of Israel, Syrians are failing to visit “their relatives in the Syrian motherland.” In the UN human rights world, only the United States voted against.

Behavior at the Council does clarify that the demonization of Israel at the U.N. is really about denying Jewish self-determination and encouraging the ultimate destruction of a Jewish state.

The Palestinian ambassador’s speech on March 28, 2014 included: “since the establishment of Israel until today, Israel has flouted international legitimacy.”

On March 24, 2014, the Palestinian ambassador told the Council: “recognizing the Jewish nature of the Israeli state is an arrogant demand. There is no justification for this claim.”  Four days later, he feigned: “We don’t really know what is meant by anti-semitism when it is claimed by Israel here.”

We do know what is meant by anti-Semitism.  Moreover, we recognize the long list of American values subverted by the U.N. Human Rights Council – and by a foreign policy whose endgame has been the approval of our enemies.

Kerry Back in Town to Force Release of Terrorists, The Jewish Press, Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu, March 31, 2014

Kerry may force Israel to free more terrorist; the problem is he won’t take them with him when he leaves.

. . . .

“Secretary Kerry decided it would be productive to return to the region,” State Dept. spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. Translation: Kerry is roaring into town with ammunition on both shoulders and will tell both sides that they will bear the wrath of Obama himself if they don’t agree to help the president make a fool out of himself.

Photo Credit: Matty Stern/US Embassy of Tel Aviv/Flash 90.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry pushed the emergency ejection button on his Paris talks with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov over the crisis in Ukraine and flew into Israel to try and force a last-minute agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority for the release of more Arab terrorists.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has stated no more concessions will be taken unless it is “clear” what Israel will receive in return, but it is anyone’s guess what Israel could gain except for Brownie points in the White House and another dinner with Kerry, for what it’s worth.

And motorists are being smacked with the occasional closing of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway between 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 pm. Israeli time and during Tuesday morning’s rush hour, 8-10 a.m., so Kerry can have all the of the road it himself.

The Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Quds quoted Kerry as saying he told PA officials he will free the terrorists with his own hands if he has to.

Most Israelis, from Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to even the dovish media with the exception of Haaretz, would not mind if Kerry would take a walk, a very long walk and even better off a short pier.

The Palestinian Authority also is not so thrilled with him. Its officials have created a cold air mass before his arrival, saying that they really are not interested in extending the talks that Kerry initiated last July, but that can be discounted as playing hard to get.

Kerry will meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu Monday evening and then travel to Ramallah for a discussion with Mahmoud Abbas.

“Secretary Kerry decided it would be productive to return to the region,” State Dept. spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Translation: Kerry is roaring into town with ammunition on both shoulders and will tell both sides that they will bear the wrath of Obama himself if they don’t agree to help the president make a fool out of himself.

No one really knows who is on first anymore. Kerry and his media groupies have created the fiction that Israel agreed last July to free several Arab terrorists who are card-carrying Israeli citizens.

Netanyahu was quoted this past December 31 saying he never agreed to free them as part of the fourth and final batch of terrorists, but the truth really doesn’t matter anymore. Freeing them has been accepted as a fact by Kerry, the Palestinian Authority, and the media, so the truth really does not matter anymore.

Israel reportedly has offered to free more than the last group of 26 terrorists, which is not likely to happen unless he card-carrying Israelis will remain in jail. The Palestinian Authority supposedly has demanded that Israel free several hundred terrorists, and all of this, of course, for the grand prize of a few more months of charades masked as negotiations” over when to end the follies.

Kerry said Monday afternoon, “I think it’d be inappropriate to get into any kind of judgments about what may or may not occur or happen because it’s really a question between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and what Prime Minister Netanyahu is prepared to do. So he has – he is working diligently, I know. I just literally talked to him 15 minutes ago. And he’s working at it.”

Kerry and Netanyahu spoke Sunday night and again Monday morning, and they obviously were not just chewing the fat.

Not by coincidence, Opposition leader Yitzchak Herzog is meeting in Amman Monday with Jordanian King Abdullah, the first official Israeli visit since Israeli soldiers killed a Jordanian judge at the Allenby Bridge crossing when he allegedly attacked a soldier and tried to grab his weapon.

Kerry is banking on the usual gambit of threatening Abba and Netanyahu that whoever says “no” will be blamed for the collapse of his stage show. At some point, and that point is not far down the road and may already have been reached, the Palestinian Authority will say, “Blame us all you want. We have the United Nations in our pockets.”

Netanyahu so far has been too chicken to be blamed because the only thing he has in his picket is the Book of Psalms, but he hasn’t used it very much.

Syrian Rebels Deny Bid to Thwart Chemical-Arms Removal – Global Security Newswire.

A Syrian opposition fighter takes part in a training exercise in the city of Deir Ezzor last week. A Syrian rebel group reportedly denied a Russian assertion that opposition forces are seizing coastal territory in a bid to thwart the removal of warfare chemicals from the country. (Ahmad Aboud/AFP/Getty Images)

Syrian rebels rejected a Russian claim that they are seizing coastal territory to disrupt their country’s chemical disarmament, Turkey’s Anadolu Agency reports.

The Russian Foreign Ministry reportedly issued the accusation after Syrian opposition forces fought for control of areas in the embattled country’s Latakia province, the news service indicated on Saturday. Danish and Norwegian cargo vessels have been picking up government warfare chemicals arriving at the provincial capital — a port city of the same name — in an effort to remove and destroy the regime’s entire stockpile before July.

Hisham Marwah, legal committee head for the opposition’s Syrian National Council, said Moscow’s assertions are intended to excuse any failure by its Damascus ally to eliminate the “chemical weapons within the allotted deadline.”

Marwah asserted that Russia’s comments throw doubt on Moscow’s commitment to eliminating the lethal materials stockpiled by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government.

Meanwhile, a former British military officer said he believed that rebel forces have attacked “every single” chemical-arms shipment to the port city to date, ABC News reported on Saturday.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon added that Damascus “has put massive military resources into these convoys, supporting them with tanks and air protection. They also put forces down the road before the convoys, almost blasting through to Latakia.”

Faisal Mekdad, Assad’s deputy foreign minister, voiced concerns about rebel threats to the disarmament effort in a Sunday meeting with Sigrid Kaag, the special coordinator of a U.N.-OPCW mission overseeing the project, according to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency.

The discussion of possible threats to the chemical-arms shipments came as President Obama considered whether to supply certain Syrian rebel groups with portable anti-air missiles, the Australian Associated Press reported.

On Peace Talks and Prisoner Releases, Commentary Magazine, Tom Wilson, March 31, 2014

We have come a long way from the days when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu used to call for negotiations without preconditions. Now it has simply become expected that Israel must demonstrate “good will” by purchasing the presence of the Palestinians at the negotiating table with round after round of painful concessions. And few things must be more painful for Israelis than having to see those who murdered their loved ones walk free. It flies in the face of the most basic notions about justice and, of course, it’s tactically suicidal: those well-schooled in terror go free to resume their activities; those contemplating the path of terrorism know that in the event they are captured they will likely be released in a prisoner exchange eventually. Yet, the Israeli government has set a dangerous precedent and throwing on the breaks now may prove easier said than done.

The Palestinians have recently issued a new demand. Either Israel lets 1,000 Palestinian prisoners walk free or Palestinian negotiators will walk from the current round of peace talks. The previous 9 months of fruitless negotiations were paid for by the Israelis agreeing to release 104 Palestinian security prisoners. These were to be released in stages so as to ensure that the Palestinians wouldn’t simply take the prisoners and run. At each stage the Palestinians would be obliged to continue with the negotiations and the next batch of terrorists would be released. But the deadline for the final installment of convicted criminals came and went this weekend. With Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas refusing to carry on with the talks, Israel announced that this last prisoner release would not be made.

This was hardly an unfair decision. With the Palestinians insisting the talks were over and that they were going back to the United Nations to pursue statehood there, the Israelis had nothing to gain from setting more terrorists loose. Yet, not releasing the prisoners was only ever going to invite more condemnation, despite the fact that threatening not to do so was Israel’s way of attempting to keep talks open.

Indeed, it has been reported that the State Department was not at all pleased about the prospect Israel backing out on the prisoner release. By all accounts U.S. officials have warned Israel that if the Palestinians leave talks then America will not be able to stop them from going to the UN. In reality there is much that the U.S. could do to keep Abbas from leaving the talks in the first place, if only it chose to. The Palestinian Authority is in a dire financial mess; the threat of withholding the large amounts of U.S. funding the PA relies on to function would be one way of tying the Palestinians to the peace table.

Remarkably, it seems that the Israeli government has actually come forward with still more concessions of its own. This time the Israelis are offering 400 Palestinian terrorists in return for six more months of negotiations. That’s quite an inflation from the 104 terrorists agreed upon for nine months of talks. No doubt sensing that he is gaining the upper hand in all of this, Abbas has now done what tyrants always do when they sense they’re being appeased: he has demanded more. This time, says Abbas, Israel will have to release 1,000 prisoners to renew Palestinian participation in peace talks.

That last demand should be a signal to America and the world that the Palestinians are not remotely serious about the negotiation process. Not that any such signal should be needed by now. Perhaps the international community would be forced to note this if the Israelis weren’t sending out their own signal, one that only serves to undermine their ability to hold out against such unreasonableness on the part of the Palestinians. By upping the offer to 400, Israel is signalling that it is perfectly reasonable that large numbers of murderers should be released in return for halfhearted Palestinian participation in talks. All that has to be haggled over now is how many.

But this is a disastrous message to send to the world. It gives the impression that a negotiated peace is not in the Palestinians’ interest–that they would indeed be better off taking unilateral moves, and that all these talks are primarily for Israel’s benefit. That last point is the line that Obama pushes too.

Oh, but there is just one other small thing that Abbas is asking for along with that minor matter of the 1,000 terrorists going free. Abbas is now saying that Israel must agree to transfer parts of Israeli controlled Area C of the West Bank into PA control. But this demand may give a clue about where Abbas is weak and what he most fears from Israel. He has been threatening that the Palestinians will go back to the UN to continue pushing for unilateral recognition there. Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett has suggested that Israel should simply let Abbas go. But Bennett and his party, along with much of the Likud, have also been calling for the annexation of Area C to Israel. It is possible that Abbas is demanding a reduction in the size of Area C precisely because he fears an Israeli annexation. That should tell Israel something about where it has some leverage.