It's Obama's Fault

Jerusalem Post Palestinian affairs correspondent Khaled Abu-Toameh...faults President Barack Obama and the Palestinian leadership.

“He made three crucial mistakes,” Abu-Toameh said of Obama in an interview after his talk. “The first was manufacturing a crisis out of the settlements issue; the Palestinian Authority never made an issue of the settlements until Obama demanded a full freeze. The second mistake was dragging [Palestinian President] Mahmoud Abbas to New York to meet with Obama and Bibi...the third mistake came with the Goldstone Report scandal, when the Americans forced Abbas to pull the Goldstone petition from the U.N., and then the story leaked...

“Fatah has an interest in keeping Israel in the West Bank because Israel is doing its job by cracking down on Hamas there.” If Israel were to disengage, he noted, “the place would fall apart, and Hamas would win an election in the West Bank...