In his remarks, Mr. Moussa said Israel's "continuous procedures, which were still ongoing until last night, meddling with Jerusalem and the Aksa Mosque and in Hebron and building settlements in the West Bank, defying everyone, is a matter that does not foreshadow, in fact it confirms, that all the paths of negotiations with Israel in this form are unproductive".
Abbas has chosen the path of negotiation and accommodation with Israel, concluding (as the PLO did officially as long ago as 1988) that armed resistance is futile.
People know very well that those who took the other path – of negotiation without resistance – got nothing from it: only more settlements, checkpoints, killings, prisoners and occupation without end.
MR. BOUCHER: If you go back to what we said before, before September 11th, we were working very hard to try to create a certain momentum in the process, to try to make the violence and help the parties make the violence end and get back to this path of negotiation and confidence-building measures, confidence building and then negotiation.
Asked if Israel had agreed to remove some of the outposts it regarded as illegal, he refused to be more specific, but an Israeli official said Mr. Olmert promised Mr. Abbas to take some actions to show that the path of negotiation would bring "tangible results".
"This path of negotiation will reach a final agreement," he said from the capital, Tehran, in a televised address translated by AFP.
"Israel chose the path of racism, occupation and settlement building, and did not choose the path of negotiations and partnership between us," he said.
The other is that the path of negotiations would die and Israel would, in essence, impose the conditions of a peace on the Palestinians.
"Everyone sitting around this table is convinced that the path of negotiations with Israel under the current circumstances has become unbeneficial," Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the 22-member Arab League, said of the stalemate.
"I have a good feeling that President Clinton will urge India to also take the path of negotiations and a peaceful resolution to the Kashmir dispute," Tariq Altaf, a spokesman for the Pakistani Foreign Office, said today.
At a moment when Trump has surprised everyone by choosing the path of negotiations with North Korea, there are sound, practical reasons he should consider sticking with the same approach to Iran.
