CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST on FOXNews 'Special Report': We have to start understanding that Abbas is an illusion. He is a fiction. He is a ghost. He is a potential president. I could go on, but you get the idea.
I mean, even the presidency he holds is a dubious legality. And it is said of him that he doesn't even control downtown Ramallah where his offices are.
So you got a man who doesn't have anything in his control. And the reason that years of negotiations he held with the previous Israeli leader, Ehud Olmert, went nowhere is because when Olmert offered everything, Abbas had nothing he can offer to back it up.
.... think Obama wants in the Cairo speech to make a semi-dramatic announcement of some Israeli concession. And that's why I think he is pushing hard on settlements.
He is not going to get it. And the reason is — it sounds arcane, but the Israelis agreed to a settlement freeze in the sense of no expansion of it territorially. But what the administration is insisting on is no natural growth...
The Israelis are saying we won't expand the territory it covers but if a family has children, it can build a house nearby within its property as a way to accommodate new people. A freeze means in which you don't allow that, means essentially a withering away of settlements, and it means Israel giving away a very important chip in return for nothing.
JIM HOAGLAND-WASHINGTON POST:Memo to President Obama:
Cling to one thought as you work on your greatly anticipated speech to the Muslim world Thursday in Cairo, Mr. President: There is no American solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict that you can heroically deliver from on high. Peace must be built from the bottom up by the warring sides. Cling to that thought but keep it to yourself.....
NEWYORKTIMES: ....When Mr. Netanyahu visited the White House last week, Mr. Obama publicly pressed the Israeli leader to freeze settlements and commit to a two-state solution. Now he has set markers for Mr. Abbas, urging him to make greater efforts to rein in militants and halt incitement against Israel. We hope he will do the same for leading Arab states.
For eight years, Arab leaders and the Palestinians complained bitterly because President George W. Bush wasn’t willing to invest in Middle East peace. Now that they have an American president who is willing, they finally have to do their part.
