As to settlement freeze – that’s already the situation on the ground. Nowhere in East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria do you see nowadays any new projects coming up, other than a few, local projects, here and there.
Dark times are coming. Livni actually spoke up regarding the possibility that Jewish Home would leave the coalition government over the negotiations, and stopped just short of saying how delighted she would be to see them go.
Instead of a rebellion in the ranks of Likud-Beiteinu, we’re likely to see the Labor party coming to replace Bennett and the Srugim. There’s nobody here but us battered wives.
The one ray of hope is the Hamas. Its spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, told the Ma’an news agency on Saturday that the PA’s return to negotiations is a “disaster” and a cover for the Israeli agenda of Judaization, settlement building and the displacement of Palestinians.
Moreover, the return to peace talks will risk the reconciliation talk between Hamas and the PA, Barhoum added. “Stopping political reconciliation for negotiations between the PA and Israel is very dangerous,” he said.
Which could mean that Hamas would go back to undermining the PA in Judea and Samaria, making it very tough for them to concede to anything in the talks with israel. Under such pressure, the PA negotiators would be forced to backtrack quickly, much as they have done twice already, in their 2000 talks with Ehud Barak in Camp David, and their 2007 talks with Ehud Olmert in Annapolis.