PA President Mahmoud Abbas "insists on failure," says the Washington Post. Photo: Twitter

A powerful editorial in today’s Washington Post has charged Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas with “pushing yet another quixotic attempt to have the U.N. Security Council impose Palestinian terms for a settlement on Israel.”

Observing that Abbas refused to accept a U.S.-brokered “framework” for the creation of a Palestinian state in a meeting with President Barack Obama last March, the Post pointed out that had he done so, “key Palestinian demands, including a stipulation that the territory of the future Palestine be based on Israel’s 1967 borders,” would have enjoyed American backing.

Instead, Abbas’s strategy of gaining unilateral recognition for a Palestinian state at the United Nations is leading the Palestinians to a dead end. “Not only does this text have no chance of being approved — notwithstanding the tensions between the Obama administration and the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the United States would exercise its veto, if necessary — but the Palestinians’ support on the Security Council is weaker this week than it probably will be next month after a membership rotation. Yet Mr. Abbas appears ready to insist on failing, just a few months after turning aside a U.S. initiative that had at least some chance of delivering the state he says he wants,” the Post stated.

The Post concluded: “Mr. Abbas does, of course, have a choice. He could endorse the framework laboriously negotiated by Secretary of State John F. Kerry and challenge Mr. Netanyahu — or his successor after Israel’s upcoming election — to resume negotiations. Statehood would then be on the table — but the 79-year-old Palestinian leader would have to commit himself formally to compromises he has until now discussed only in private with U.S. and Israeli leaders. Rather than lobby at the United Nations, he would have to attempt for the first time to sell those concessions to his own people.”