Rice to Abbas: Commit political suicide

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Time's Tim McGirk has a scoop from Israel, where U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been desperately trying to salvage the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Today, Rice announced that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would resume peace negotiations with Israel, despite Abbas's earlier position that he would only do so after a ceasefire in Gaza was in place. The backstory here is revealing:

Insiders say Rice, in heated talks yesterday with Abbas, threatened to cut off all international aid and support to the Palestinian Authority. Privately, Palestinian advisers say that Abbas was aghast at how Rice had failed to understand the level of outrage in the Arab world, and particularly among Palestinians, over the heavy civilian casualties that resulted in Israel's fierce air and ground assault last week in Gaza.

Helene Cooper and Graham Bowley of the New York Times add this nugget:

[Abbas's] position frustrated Bush administration officials who contended that he was giving Hamas a tactical victory by allowing it to hijack the Arab-Israeli peace negotiations.... Despite his position, many Palestinian, American and Israeli officials say that, for political reasons, Mr. Abbas needs the peace process more than his Israeli and American counterparts.

Simply put, these officials are wrong. Yes, Abbas needs the peace process in general. But politically, he can't very well sit down with Ehud Olmert while Israeli bombs are killing Palestinian civilians. He needs to wait a decent interval until the fury dies down. By agreeing to pretend to negotiate instead of pretending not to negotiate, all he did was reinforce his image as an American-Israeli puppet  -- and he will get no closer to a peace treaty by being dragged to the table against his will. And having Rice announce the reversal? That was the icing on the cake.