The Palestinians have become pretty upfront in saying that if they are given enough concessions, they are willing to delay their UN statehood bid. This makes me think this whole gambit was just another ruse by the Palestinians to get more pressure applied upon the Israelis to give up something for nothing. And I am thinking that, once again, this strategy is working. It's no secret that Obama doesn't want to veto a Palestinian statehood resolution as this will wreck all the "progress" he thinks he has made during his term with the Arab world, so he will probably be putting as much pressure as possible to have Israel cave to whatever concessions are in Tony Blair's panic-laced proposal (which is not public). My guess is that the proposal will force Israel to accept the 1949 armistice line borders as the basis on negotiations and have some sort of new temporary freeze on settlement activity in exchange for a temporary halt to the UN bid. Israel will very likely be giving up something for nothing as there is no chance for the negotiations to work and Israel will be in the same situation in 3 or 6 months as it is now, when it might be forced to give up even more (that is pretty much how the negotiations have been going so far after all). I'm sure Bibi is currently tempted to accept the Blair proposal if the terms aren't overly onerous for Israel as Turkey and Egypt are currently causing a lot of problems already (and he needs US support to deal with them). Plus, the more he delays, the closer he gets to a Republican President who will be much more Pro-Israel. And perhaps that is the wise course. But how long can Israel be taken advantage of by completely insincere parties? When will it end?
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