“September is behind us, but one lesson learned is that the Palestinian strategy is to refrain from real negotiations requiring Palestinian concessions and instead to try to achieve an imposed solution (which the Palestinians believe will be disadvantageous to Israel).

In the past, they hoped to achieve this through the U.S., and now they hope to do it through the U.N. If, in the past, they torpedoed negotiations (following Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak’s Camp David Summit) by means of the Second intifada (planned in advance by Yasser Arafat); this time it is through a diplomatic intifada planned in advance by Mahmoud Abbas. They have marked their targets: Israel and even the U.S. The Palestinians and their allies have launched a premeditated campaign to diminish our stature in the international arena, particularly the Middle East.

To a certain extent President Barack Obama himself reduced the U.S.’s stature when he declared that the U.S. would act on the international stage primarily through the U.N. We can assume that was not the result he intended. Still, Benjamin Netanyahu’s and Abbas’ speeches were preceded by the U.S. president’s important speech in which he addressed the various components of the Israeli-Arab conflict in a fair and balanced way. For this he was subjected to a barrage of insults from the Israeli and international Left, who had discovered, to their dismay, that the wind had been taken out of their sails.”

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