It's odd what happens when big elections get close. Sometimes it's interesting.
First, Volleyball has a diary up now here recommended for your perusal about PM Bibi Netanyahu calling new elections in Israel for February or March, supposedly after a failure to agree a budget. This is also up in today's I papers. Previously, the elections were set for the end of the year. There are more issues up for discussion and side taking in that election than the budget alone, including a number discussed here from time to time, concerns about security, the Tal law, settlement legalization and such. It should be an interesting few months now that the elections are officially on for early Spring.
Then THIS!!! From Ha'aretz, not behind the pay wall either but from AP.
The short of this Haaretz article is that President Abbas has been telling European diplomats that if (but only if?) Palestine gets non member state status in the UN, in November, after the US general election, then the peace talks should resume, apparently without the precondition of stopping and removing settlements while they go on. The theory behind this is that state recognition, and its concomittants not mentioned in the article, will strengthen the Palestinian hand. The unmentioned concomittants may and probably do include access by the newly recognized non member state to the International Criminal Court and other similar bodies for relief against various bits of Israeli governmental conduct much discussed here,although not this week.
This would be a substantial if risky breakthrough, if correct and if it pans out, as the problem of the ongoing settlement process and the ongoing bad conduct of settlers has been a, if not the, substantial reason why talks have not resumed. If the article is correct, the Israeli government will have a much more substantial problem avoiding reopening the talks since this precondition giveup is of a huge matter. And the election now scheduled may serve as a sort of referendum on Israeli street views of the matter, with the new opening now on the table.
It also coincides with another condition the UN usually uses for state recognition issues, namely the upcoming Palestinian elections, now already underway.
It does seem that some odd combination of the probable re-election of Obama, and Romney's speech yesterday at VMI calling for a secure Palestinian State and the State of Israel both, may be having some effect, since if R is to be believed, there is no longer any candidate in the US to hide behind in not doing the peace negotiations for Israel, as both will have a version of the same public position. ( Believing Romney is a big caveat, of course). Bibi may have lost more than he anticipated when he tried to fiddle with the US elections.
Another factor changing the temperature of negotiations is probably the now infamous but anonymously sent drone which was shot down in the last day or two over the Negev, and which came from somewhere in the Med, NOT Gaza or WB, according to the reports. That was a serious shot across the Israeli governmental bow by somebody not yet identified. Just one and the sharper for the anonymity of it. Only so many have drones, and it got all the way the the Negev. And thusfar nobody has claimed credit for it of which I have heard.
Then there is an article in both H and JP this morning about 'discussions' between the US and Israel about a much smaller than previously discussed 'surgical strike' on the Iranian nuclear site or sites. The article in question indicates a former Clinton official as the leaker and a premise of the leak being that there may be benefit to the anti Iranian nuke side of the public knowledge that there is discussion of a smaller surgical strike in the wind.
And the hints that Oslo may have to be scrapped if not reworked, something under discussion in the press in the past few weeks, may also figure into the matter, as the failure of talks to proceed under that in the five year period stated there, has been causing larger and larger problems in the physicial condition and overuse of the land which cannot go on indefinitiely, as well as indefinite detention of prisoners and the like.
It should be interesting to see how these matters shake out, since they will be shaking out together in the same time frame.
Comments invited under my usual housekeeping rules. Everyone who follows IP has seen them.
9:36 PM PT: The first diary noted as a worthy read was that of Volleyboy 1.