The absolutist Palestinian demand for a complete halt to settlement construction was cemented at the Fatah party congress in August. But the US had eased away from insisting on a wholesale cessation of settlement activity. After all, both the Bush administration and Israeli-Palestinian negotiators had recognized that any final peace arrangement would involve some kind of territorial swap, withIsrael retaining major settlement blocs and handing over some territory within its pre-1967 border.

Abbas remained adamant, refusing to return to negotiations that had been ongoing since the 1993 Oslo Accords. He rebuked Netanyahu’s announcement in November of a 10-month freeze on new settlement construction - a move the Obama administration welcomed and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called “unprecedented.” By then, however, Abbas had announced his readiness to resign as PA president, fueling speculation about the future of democratic PA government.

AJC’s Kenneth Bandler in the Jerusalem Post - read the entire piece here.