"Everyone there should move, should run, should grab more hills, expand more territory. Everything that’s grabbed will be in our hands. Everything we don’t grab will be in their hands."

Ariel Sharon may have been a bad bastard but as the above quote shows at least he was pretty clear about what he wanted and how the Israeli state was going to get it. Theft and, when necessary, murder.

Mahmoud Abbas lacks something of the determined urgency of the Zionist land thieves on the West Bank. “"We will not have any quick reactions" was his public statement on the resumption of settlement building. As the cement is being poured into the foundations to guarantee that stolen land won’t be returned to the Palestinians the dithering Abbas decides to speak to the one group of people as useless and compromised as he is. The Arab League, a collection of regional patsies for US imperialism.

Netanyahu by contrast shows something of a gift for deadpan humour.  "The prime minister calls on the residents in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and the political parties to show restraint and responsibility today and in the future exactly as they showed restraint and responsibility throughout the months of the freeze.”

They new that he was only jesting. “Women raised their arms aloft as they swayed to pan pipe music in the setting sun, Christian pilgrims from Finland sang and banged on their tambourines, while supporters released thousands of blue and white balloons, the colours of Israel’s flag, into the sky.” It’s restraint Benjamin but not as we know it.

It was Arafat who legitimised these Israeli land grabs. He recognised the state and didn’t even demand a freeze on settlement building for doing so. Abbas manages to make even the later Arafat look good. Having spent weeks blustering that if construction resumed the talks would end he suddenly comes over all coquettish and goes off to see what his mates think. No wonder the Israelis feel free to do whatever they want.  

Abbas’ utter lack of a bottom line in these negotiations and appetite for public humiliation is astonishing. There can’t be  peace without an end to the occupation of the territories that were occupied since 1967, the dismantlement of the separation wall which Israel has been building and the dismantlement of the settlements. Those organisations calling on him to walk away are right.