While it is too early to know what the Trump Administration's Middle East peace team – led by Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt – will suggest as the basis for possible negotiations, it is already evident that the Palestinian leadership is in anguish, and for the time being adamant in refusing to engage with the U.S. effort.
Why is Israel returning to Africa? For Netanyahu, one reason dominates all others. “The automatic majority against Israel at the UN is composed—first and foremost—of African countries,” he told a gathering of Israel’s ambassadors to Africa in February of last year. “Whether in the end or at the outset, our goal is to change their voting patterns.”
For now, the US, Israel, the EU and some Arab states appear more willing to help the Palestinians in Gaza than their own leaders. This, of course, is not new. It is the tragic ongoing curse of Palestinian history.
Within a relatively short period of time, a full load of sobering, even shattering, bad news has rained upon Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s head.