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A meeting between US Middle East envoy George Mitchell and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, aimed at restarting the peace progress with the Palestinians, saw 'interesting' ideas raised, the Israeli leader said Sunday. 'I heard several interesting ideas to renew the process. We are systematically interested in doing this ... and if the Palestinians will express a similar readiness, we will find ourselves in the midst of a political process, something which is important to us and to them,' Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.

... and contrast:

US Middle East envoy George Mitchell was meeting... after apparently failing to budge Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas toward negotiations during their talks on Friday. Mitchell met with Abbas in Ramallah for about three hours, but failed to get him to drop his insistence that Israel declare a complete construction freeze in the West Bank, including in east Jerusalem, before resuming negotiations... A statement released from the Prime Minister's Office said that the Netanyahu government... "has consistently called for the immediate resumption of talks without preconditions. The fact that talks have not taken place until now was clearly at the responsibility of the Palestinian side that has placed new unrealistic preconditions, preventing the resumption of talks."

Of course Abbas can't drop his East Jerusalem precondition, since the Obama administration painted him into a corner by demanding it themselves. So he's placed in the absurd position of demanding up front all the Israeli concessions that are supposed to be negotiated later. Since that's embarrassingly nonsensical, he ends up ruefully suggesting that maybe the US can negotiate with Israel in the Palestinians' place. That wouldn't placate the Arab world or the perpetually seething Palestinian street - Israeli concessions would be met with conspiracy theories about US/Israeli plots to cede the absolute minimum - but at least it's internally coherent. "We'll begin negotiations only Israel starts at the end" - less so.

Stephen Walt, by the by, thinks that Mitchell should resign. Apparently Obama played Mitchell for a fool by promising to pressure Israel and then backtracking because of the all-powerful Israel Lobby (quote: "I suppose I ought to be grateful to have my thesis vindicated in such striking fashion, but there's too much human misery involved.") Of course Obama actually imposed unprecedented pressure on the Jewish State only to have it harden Palestinian demands and make the peace process impossible. But whatever. Walt has been dismantled for his feverish rent-a-validator antisemitism even by lefty Chas Freeman supporters. He spent decades positing a geopolitical metaphysics where nation-states unerringly pursue their self-interest, expect apparently where American Jews and the Christians they've corrupted sully said metaphysical perfection. How original

References and related after the jump...