Banking on Abbas: The Palestinians were the weakest party to the negotiations, and the notion that they could be counted on to make concessions that would take them beyond their established consensus — June 1967 borders, a capital in East Jerusalem, some semblance of sovereignty on the security issue and a resolution to the refugee problem that doesn’t force a wholesale capitulation — was the other illusory assumption. Under Yasser Arafat, a leader with more street cred and legitimacy than Abbas, Palestinians were not prepared to depart from this consensus. Why would Abbas — a much weaker leader — be prepared to do it, or accede to demands that he recognize Israel as a Jewish state?
The issue is not what Abbas was prepared to tell Kerry or Netanyahu in private. It is what he was prepared to say publicly and what he needed to be paid to say it. Abbas is presiding over a weak economy and a divided Palestinian national movement that looks like Noah’s ark, in which there are two of everything (polities, security services, constitutions and even visions of Palestine). He has very little Arab state support. The notion that he could be depended on for major deliverables was a fantasy.
Indeed, American negotiators, myself included, have been underestimating what Palestinians need in negotiations for years. Abbas always had a Plan B: going to the U.N., negotiating unity with Hamas, even toying with dissolving the Palestinian Authority. He’s much more comfortable in that milieu, and Netanyahu is more comfortable being a security prime minister rather than a peace prime minister. Abbas feels no urgency either to negotiate a peace that doesn’t meet his needs.
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