Kurdled Kerry (and Kerplunked)

Remember this?

Kerry pushes Israel to consider Arab League peace plan
July 17, 2013

After meeting with Arab League officials and Abbas in Amman, US Secretary of State urges Israel to "look hard" at Arab peace initiative; Israeli officials say plan is fine as basis of discussion, not a dictate.

Well, now we have this:

Arab League declares 'total rejection' of Jewish state recognition March 26, 2014

The Arab League announced on Wednesday its full backing of a Palestinian refusal to meet Israel's demand to be recognized as a Jewish state, a condition Jerusalem says it requires for peace.  "We express our total rejection of the call to consider Israel as a Jewish state," read a statement from the final day of the Arab summit in Kuwait.

And, in case you missed it:

Abbas defiant in speech of '3 noes' January 14, 2014

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says the Palestinians will not recognize Israel as a Jewish state, will not agree to any deal that does not make east Jerusalem the future Palestinian capital and will not give up the right of return.

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UPDATE

Just saw this:

Third-Party Conflict Management and the Willingness to Make Concessions

Abstract

Third-party conflict management, particularly legal dispute resolution (arbitration and adjudication) and mediation, can help improve the willingness of disputants to make asymmetric concessions by ameliorating commitment problems and providing political cover. In both regards, and especially pertaining to commitment problems, mediation has substantial limitations when compared to legal dispute resolution. We develop these arguments and test the observable implications on the Issue Correlates of War data. To get traction on the mechanisms at work, we distinguish between challenger concessions and defender concessions, positing that challenger concessions face the primary hurdle of political cover while defender concessions face the primary hurdle of commitment problems. We find that legal dispute resolution strongly increases the propensity for concessions by both challengers and targets, even major asymmetric concessions. Mediation, on the other hand, only helps increase minor challenger concessions. Also consistent with expectations, mediation best enables asymmetric challenger concessions in the highly salient cases that need the most political cover, and legal dispute resolution best enables asymmetric concessions when there has been a history of failed conflict management attempts that perpetuate mistrust.

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