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"After U.S. Middle East peace efforts were thrown into doubt by the threat last week by a frustrated Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to not run in elections in January, Palestinian elections officials have recommended those elections be called off. Abbas must approve the decision. If he does, it could throw a life-raft to the Obama administration, whose efforts to get Israeli Palestinian peace talks relaunched have been in a tailspin in recent weeks.....
"Looks like Abu Mazen won't have to 'not run because elections have been postponed," veteran U.S. Middle East negotiator Aaron Miller commented by e-mail. "Bibi is really quite masterful. [He's] now in Paris doing some station identification on the Syrian track and demonstrating that with Sarkozy, he doesn't need Obama; he's got all kinds of balls up in the air; 'so, Mr. Abu Mazen, if you want to leave, I'll do Syria.'"
"Abu Mazen needs something to show for having to accept a partial freeze (if he does) and in the wake of the mess created for him on Goldstone by the U.S. and the cousins," one former senior George H.W. Bush administration official said. "So Bibi can refuse to accept it as a precondition or whatever he wants, but there is no talking without some assurance from the US government as to where it is headed and by when. So long as [Netanyahu] keeps building settlements, the Arabs will never trust anything he has to say about being serious about peace talks given his track record on backtracking on commitments post-Oslo."
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