It was one juvenile stunt after another. On Feb. 11 at the United Nations, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas _ who refuses to engage in the direct negotiations with Israel that are the only path toward a lasting peace _ went before the Security Council to dump on President Donald Trump's peace blueprint. He failed to muster even the nine out of 15 votes necessary to get a vote condemning the plan. (It would've been vetoed by the U.S. anyway.)
On Feb. 12, the U.N.'s High Commissioner for Human Rights, following through on a directive of the world body's irredeemably anti-Israel Human Rights Council, released a list of 112 international companies that it says do business with Israeli settlements. This is the UN's most explicit embrace yet of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, designed to delegitimize Israel's right to exist.
Every reasonable Israeli and Palestinian knows far-flung, sparsely populated outposts are almost surely going to have to be ceded as part of an eventual Palestinian state. Every reasonable Israeli and Palestinian also knows that the close-to-Jerusalem parts of the West Bank, where 70% of the Jewish population lives, will not be severed from Israel under any final agreement.
Yet rather than get down to brass tacks, Abbas in the West Bank _ and worse still, Hamas in Gaza, which remains committed to obliterating Israel entirely _ are bent on isolating Israel and choking it economically.
Trump's peace plan is imperfect, to be sure. There's an obvious way to make it better: Stop pounding the table, sit down at it and talk.
