Because threats of war are what you expect from the recipient of billions in international assistance:

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas sent a letter to PA Arabs on Saturday saying Israel must retreat to its 1949 borders or face war. "The passage of years... will not force us to abandon or surrender a single inch," of Judea, Samaria or Jerusalem, Abbas said in the letter, which was published by PA media.

I'm not really sure why this counts as news. It's been his explicit stance for at least a year and he's never been shy about rebuffing talks whenever he wanted to sulk. He's gone out of his way to insult world leaders who so much as symbolically affirmed Israel's right to exist. He celebrates vicious child-murdering terrorists as heroes.

Perhaps if you spend your time willfully lying about Palestinian intentions - which is to say, if you're a diplomat or a major media outlet - you become invested in your own sophistication. And yet: Abbas said this in between laying the cornerstone for Ramallah's Arafat museum and telling Olmert not to respond to Hamas's bombardment of Israeli civilians. So "surprise" might be an inapt reaction.

Abbas's Fatah party also had the honor of claiming the 17 year old terrorist that the IDF just nabbed in Nablus. So really a banner weekend for them, ya know?

References and previously after the jump...