US again gives lip service to Mideast neutrality, back of hand to #Palestinians

So, Mahmoud Abbas wants the government of Palestine to join a few UN agencies?

Nope, can't do that, the US says; Dear Leader tells Secretary of State John Kerry to stop talking to the Palestinian leader.

Specific on which agencies the Palestinians want to join?

A senior Palestinian official said the 15 agencies Mr. Abbas moved to join — out of more than 60 possible — did not include the International Criminal Court or International Court of Justice, where many Palestinians hope to prosecute Israelis for what they consider war crimes, including the demolition of homes, arrests and killings of Palestinians, and the building of settlements. The 15 did include the Geneva and Vienna Conventions and agencies dealing with women’s and children’s rights, the official said.

Sounds reasonable to me. Abbas is deliberately avoiding being highly provocative.

But, we still give him the back of the hand.

And, that's why this idea that we would release Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard 18 months early to speed up the peace process is bullshit. Because, as al-Jazeera documented a couple of years ago, the "peace process" that the US envisions has always been on Israel's terms, and the Palestinian Authority has always had to dance to the puppet strings of US money, whereas, ever since Poppy Bush's one brief "hold" on foreign aid to Israel, we've never put Tel Aviv through the same hoops.

And, if anything, Obama's worse than Poppy's son Shrub, not better. From diminishing the severity of Israeli settlements in Palestine to

That said, per the link about Israeli settlements, Abbas has been a good Palestinian leader only through the soft bigotry of low expectations and comparisons to his predecessor, Yasir Arafat.

On the third hand, mainstream media have a history of misrepresenting how much, or how little, Israel is actually ready to give away on the land issue.  Also on the third hand, it's not just Abbas that's been getting the back of the hand; it's PA leadership in general.

Back to the original link, though, with this as the nut graf:

Israel and the United States have argued that Palestinian membership in these international agencies is a mistaken approach to Palestinian statehood, which should instead be negotiated directly between Israel and the Palestinians. Congress passed a law saying such membership could trigger a withdrawal of United States financial aid to the Palestinian Authority and other steps.

Uhh, I thought Palestine already was a state? So says 70 percent of UN member states; only the US and Western allies, plus a stray country here and there, disagree.

That said, the reason the US and the West reject it is because the PLO and Israel both agreed in the Oslo Accords not to act unilaterally on this issue.

On the fourth hand, this is the real world; usually a geopolitical action is part of a chess board, and a chess board that's not quite so blatantly underwritten with US dollars. And also on the fourth hand, since Bibi Netanyahu intransigently opposes Palestinian statehood, one could argue HE is the one acting unilaterally.

And, since Obama and Kerry won't lean on him to loosen up (despite Bibi's tears over various Obama alleged actions) there you go.