From the Oval Office, U.S. President Barack Obama speaks on the phone with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sept. 27, 2013.

JNS.org – President Barack Obama on Friday blamed both the Israelis and Palestinians for the failure of the peace process. The latest U.S.-brokered peace talks fell apart after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party signed a unity pact with the terrorist group Hamas.

“There may come a point at which there just needs to be a pause and both sides need to look at the alternatives,” Obama said from South Korea. “What we haven’t seen is the political will to make tough decisions, frankly, and that’s been true on both sides.”

Before the talks collapsed, Abbas signed applications for “Palestine” to join 15 international conventions, violating the parameters set for the negotiations last summer. Israel proceeded to cancel the fourth release of 26 Palestinian terrorist prisoners, a release it had delayed in the absence of a Palestinian agreement to extend the negotiations beyond the April 29 deadline for an agreement.