I met Dan Diker on our first evening in Israel this past summer. He is an officer of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs headed by Dore Gold. Dan is a foreign and defense policy analyst for the center. He has just filed this exclusive dispatch with us:

Today’s shocking murder of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto is the latest reminder that radical Islamic terror and not the Palestinian-Israeli issue is shaking the foundations of the Muslim and Arab Near East. With Pakistan boiling over, Lebanon trembling in fear of the Iranian and Syrian noose, and Turkey facing a crisis and maybe war with Kurdish insurgents, one wonders how and why President Bush and Secretary of State Rice have committed so much of their urgent attention to post-Annapolis Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy.

It would seem almost counterintuitive if not illogical under the current regional circumstances that Bush would still consider a stop in Israel and the Palestinian areas to move things along. But continuing diplomatic focus on a solution to the Palestinian issue instead of managing far more serious and destabilizing regional events would suggest that the White House will likely redouble efforts to create a viable Palestinian state. State Department and especially European diplomatic logic dictate that the Palestinian-Israeli crisis is fueling Arab and Muslim rage. That for them may at least partially explain Bhutto’s murder.

However, this author’s four meetings this week with three of the region’s top Arab affairs experts and a senior Palestinian official reveal that the Palestinian’s have already jettisoned the idea of reaching a compromise with Israel and have already hit cruise control if only to collect on promises of eight billion dollars in international commitments.

I sat in a Tel Aviv meeting on Wednesday with a senior advisor to Mahmaoud Abbas who told a few of us Israelis in no uncertain terms. “PA leader Abbas’s hands are tied." He will not agree to anything less than a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines including Jerusalem. That means no Palestinian flexibility on their demands for full sovereignty over Jerusalem’s historic Old City and especially the holy Temple Mount. The Palestinian official added that the Palestinians are also not conceding their demand for the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees to Israel. The only flexibility is the possibility of a two percent land swap. Why such apparent intransigence already? Negotiations have barely started.

This apparent zero sum Palestinian game may explain why three of Israel’s leading experts and fellow colleagues on the Arab East told me flat out in separate meetings this week their assessment that the Palestinians have already given up on the two state solution. One of Israel’s best known Arab affairs analysts stated to me, “The Palestinian pursuit of a two state solution has ended.” They have condemned themselves to a fate worse than the 1948 “Nakba” (disaster). They are now committed to the one state solution: One state for Arabs and Jews. Moreover, the Palestinians are too tired for another terror Intifada in the near future

Apparently the White House and State Department are out of the loop.

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Posted by Scott at 4:39 PM  |    |