Obama takes Palestine hypocrisy to UN

Dear Leader tells Palestinian leaders that only direct negotiations will get a Palestinian state. He tells the res of the world that, too. He "forgets" to tell them that both his administration and the Bush administration colluded with the government of Israel to torpedo those negotiations time after time.

The Al-Jazeera papers showed us that, and many a leader of a developing nation has read about them.

Speaking of, Team Obama has yet to respond in public to Prince Turki's op-ed in the NYT last week, with all of its implications. Wonder what the private White House take has been?

And, what if Mahmoud Abbas, stymied at the Security Council, goes to the General Assembly? There's simply no way the U.S. can bribe that many countries to vote no. And, if it gets "half-ghetto" status there, that doesn't preclude the Palestinian Authority from re-applying to the Security Council time after time. Abbas has already said that.

Meanwhile, Abbas has agreed to not ask for an immediate vote. The carrot puppet-string of $450M in U.S. aid, or withdrawal of it, was a persuader.

First, Abbas should have known, given that Team Obama threatened that before as part of disrupting negotiations, that this threat would come again.

Second, per his column, if that was official Saudi talking points, surely Prince Turki could round up $450M in loose change from under Saudi seat cushions. Why doesn't Abbas ask?

Or hell, why doesn't Hamas ask? If the Middle East applecart needs upsetting ...

And, with Israel possibly already gearing up for a new crackdown, its current leaders can't be trusted, anyway. Well, certainly not its current leaders. And not totally its former leaders, as former PM Ehud Olmert is given moralizing space in the NYT. He gets to lament that we're all at this pass, while also opposing the UN route Abbas is taking, and not talking about how past negotiations under HIS government as well as Netanyahu's were sabotaged by the Israelis and the U.S. (And they were. The al Jazeera papers tell us that, too.)

And, with the Abbas cave-in, does that show how incompetent he is? Or, as Time hinted a week ago, is he being a stooge for Israel and the U.S.? He's agreed to a delay for action by the Security Council ... but for how long? And, can this even be settled? Has Abbas talked to the Saudis?