Abbas gave the game away.

Abbas gave the game away in his speech at the United Nations. The Palestinian Authority is making a bid for statehood recognition at the U.N., bypassing the peace negotiations championed by the United States entirely. Netanyahu also made a speech at the U.N., asking Abbas to return to the peace negotiations, extending the hand of peace to the P.A., practically begging Abbas to return to peace negotiations.

That will not happen, however. Earlier in the week, the Palestinian Ambassador to the United States said the new Nation of Palestine should have no Jews in it, a comment which raised some eyebrows and suggested concerns of potential Anti-semitic discrimination against Jews in the Palestinian State, wherever it should eventually come to be. The Ambassador demurred on the charge of discrimination, commenting that he merely meant that the decades of animosity between Palestinians and Jews suggested that some separation would allow hostile feelings to cool, and offered assurances that no discrimination was intended or implied.

Perhaps one should give the benefit of the doubt and grant that is what the Ambassador meant. Abbas was less ambiguous in his U.N. address, however, when he said, "They talk to us about the Jewish state, but I respond to them with a final answer: We shall not recognize a Jewish state." If that is not a flat refusal to consider negotiations with Israel, it is virtually impossible to imagine what would be. Netanyahu is often accused of not adequately extending the hand of peace, but it is Abbas who has clearly slapped away any offer of the hand of peace

Abbas gave the game away: he is making an open statement to the world that the "final answer" is that Israel cannot exist. Can any rational person think that peace negotiations can occur as long as the Palestinians maintain this attitude? No people, neither the Jews nor anyone else, should be expected to negotiate a death sentence for themselves to "bring peace." No infidel (i.e., non-Muslim) should be foolish enough to think that the death of the Jewish nation, as Abbas, Ahmadinejad and other radical Islamists have now proposed, would bring peace, either. September 11, 2001, was a very clear statement of who is next on their agenda.

If the United Nations is going to be anything more than a farce, it should deny the Palestinian bid for statehood until the Palestinians agree to recognize Israel and to negotiate a real two-state solution.