To anyone who has been through a few rounds of these peace talks over the years, it was kind of obvious that they were going to have to collapse. What wasn’t obvious was how, when or what excuse would be given.

Abba Eban once incorrectly said that the Arabs “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” I say incorrectly because he assumed that the Arabs must have the same desire and goal for peace as he did, and they just keep messing it up.

But that statement is wrong because the underlying assumption is wrong. The Palestinian Authority is not interested in peace. At least not in the way Abba Eban understood it.

The Palestinian Authority was obtaining the release of some very horrible terrorists, a lot of them, and even lots more of them in the future. If the leaks were even partly true, they were, in their salami method, getting some seriously bad concessions from Israel, and they were doing it with the help of the most friendliest, pro-PA, anti-Israel government in US history.

And all they had to do was keep talking.

Yet they threw it all away.

Why?

It wasn’t because they weren’t getting major concessions in the talks, they were, and over time they would have gotten even more.

It wasn’t because they were being forced to offer any concessions in return – because they weren’t.

Well, except for one nonnegotiable.

Netanyahu demanded they acknowledge Israel as the Jewish state.

This would mean ending the fight, and recognizing the Jewish right to the land of Israel, and admitting that Israel was making concessions to the PA. But primarily it meant declaring an official end to the war and trying to destroy Israel.

Look at one of the precondition demands the PA made yesterday.

They demanded that 15,000 PA citizens be granted Israeli citizenship. Does that really jive with the narrative that they want their own state for their own people, or does that jive better with the fact that they still want to destroy Israel and overrun it with Arabs? The answer speaks for itself.

The PA collapsed the peace talks, most likely because they were reaching that point, just like they reached that point in the past, where they had to decide, do they want to be a normal, productive country, or do they want to continue to try to destroy Israel.

The answer is clearly the latter, and perhaps partially, because they have no culture to be the former.

But unfortunately, as experience shows, this doesn’t mean the end of the peace talks. It means the end of this round, and at some point they’ll be started up again.

Perhaps after (yet another) unilateral declaration of statehood. Perhaps after a UN vote. Perhaps after another intifada (which Israel will win). Perhaps next week, if the US gives them a big present.

And the game will continue. The talks will restart, and they’ll reach the point near the end, where they’ll collapse again, for only one reason, because a signed peace agreement won’t allow for the destruction of Israel.

Mahmoud Abbas lost his marbles, and the Palestinian Authority went berserk Thursday without the Peace Talks Straight Jacket as they came up with a bunch of new conditions for extending peace talks that essentially eliminates them.

That has been the aim of Mahmoud Abbas from Day One, but now that he is feeling its oats by thumbing its nose at the Oslo Accords, the Roadmap, John Kerry, President Barack Obama, Tzipi Livni and the Good Humor Man, he has removed all pretenses and acted like he has the world in his pocket.

He has the United Nations in his pocket, but has yet to learn that the world still includes non-Muslim countries and even a few nations that tolerate and sometimes actually support the existence of the State of Israel.

In response, Israel’s long-time cream puff negotiator Tzipi Livni finally showed her Israeli stuff and essentially told the Palestinian Authority not only to get lost, but she also offered to help it do so by suggesting a few sanctions on Ramallah.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry maintained his cool and reminded Israel and the Palestinian Authority that he has led the horses to the trough and now it is time for them to decide whether they want to drink his poison.

If Abbas drinks, he is a dead man because it means compromising, a cardinal Arab sin. If Israel drinks, it means suicide as a Jewish state.

Abbas got off his horse and jumped on a bronco, but he doesn’t know how to ride it.

Following are some of his new demands for extending talks, which really have been an illusion anyway except that make Kerry feel like he has accomplished something:

–Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu must sign on the dotted line that a new Arab country, once known as the Palestinian Authority, will include all of the land that was restored to Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967;

–Netanyahu must sign on the dotted line that the capital of this new insane asylum will be eastern Jerusalem, meaning its flag will fly over the Western Wall;

–Israel not only will release the terrorist that the Palestinian Authority  demanded it free last week, but it also will include a few others, 1,174 to be exact, including Marwan Barghouti, serving five life terms in prison for arranging the murders of Israelis;

– Israel will end the maritime blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza;

–The IDF will not enter Arab-controlled cities, not even to arrest terrorists;

Israel will give the Palestinian Authority control over ‘Area C,” which includes most of the Jews who live in Judea and Samaria.

The only demand missing is for Israel to admit that the Holy Temples never existed, God forbid, and that the Elders of Zion should be the official textbook in Zionist schools.

There are a few other demands, none of them surprising since they have been Abbas’ game plan all along. His strategy has been to get what he wants with the help of Kerry. If that doesn’t work, Plan B is to rely on the hopes that the United Nations will force Israel to go belly-up.

Plan C goes back to the favorite Arab solution – war.

Israel promptly announced that the Palestinian Authority can forget about the fourth batch of terrorists leaving their jail cells, a superfluous announcement since the PA already has refused to approve the list of names of terrorists who were to be released.

Even Tzipi Livni has enough of this nonsense.

and she must be complimented for being so graceful as to giving the Palestinian Authority a chance to repent by formally asking it to withdraw its request to join 15 U.N.-related agencies, more formally known as treaties and conventions.

Reality has returned to the traditional Arab-Israeli divide, at least for the time being, and none other than a veteran Arab journalist and retired professor of  journalism wrote on Wednesday that given the hapless Arab strategy, “Palestinians will end up with no state.”

This is no surprise to no one except the U.S. State Dept. Thomas Friedman, the European Union and perhaps President Barack Obama, although it is more probable he couldn’t care less just as long as he can stick the Arab-Israel dossier into his “forget” folder.

With Martin Indyk acting on an emergency rescue mission, armed with everything except a Magen David Adom ambulance, the prediction by Abdallah Schleifer may be a bit too soon.

The fact that Israeli negotiator Tzipi Livni and her Palestinian Authority counterpart Saeb Erekat rushed to meet last night proves they want to save U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s chance for a Nobel Peace Prize, which he would really would deserve if he would worry about the disappearing South American Rain Forest instead of stirring up trouble in Cairo, Moscow, the Ukraine, Jerusalem, Benghazi, Ankara, and Tehran.

The Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency reported that Livni and Erekat went at each other’s throats last night in the presence of Indyk, who was unable to tame the peace partners “fierce political battle.”

Specifically, according to Ma’an, “Erekat reportedly told the Israeli side that ‘we are here to negotiate in the name of the UN-recognized State of Palestine, not in the name of a Palestinian Authority whose inputs and outputs are controlled by Israel.’

“Israeli negotiators responded by threatening to put “endless” sanctions on the Palestinians, the sources said….

“Erekat responded to Israeli threats of sanctions by saying the PLO would go after Israeli officials as ‘war criminals’ in international institutions.”

And now for the full and unabridged version from Livni’s spokeswoman in answer to a question put forward by The Jewish Press, to wit: “Can you confirm or deny…that Minister Livni threatened Erekat with sanctions?

“No comment.”

First of all, it shows Livni is not stupid. As much as the Palestinian Authority tries to convince the media establishment that it’s all Israel’s fault that the myth of peace talks has been unmasked, it is not so convincing to anyone outside of the Arab world, so wht argue that 2+2=4 when others know the answer is 5?

The Jewish Press reported here last night that Livni entered the meeting with Erekat to help Abbas climb down from his lofty perch and would exit the meeting with praise for her peace partner. That did not happen, but it’s not over until it’s over.

We also reported that everything is on hold until the Arab League meets next week. It will realize that the time is not yet ripe to ditch the United States and will come up with some mental gymnastics to prolong the agony of the peace talks, or it will go for broke.

Enter Schleifer, the Arab journalist who wrote in Al Arabiya Thursday that with the apparent collapse of the talks, “There is increasing talk about the impossibility of a two-state solution and increasing talk on the Palestinian and pro-Palestinian side of a one-state solution.”

Schleifer is not to be dismissed as another hack writer. He served for nine years as NBC News Cairo bureau chief, was a special correspondent for the New York Times based in Amman, served as Al Arabiya’s Washington D.C. bureau chief and is associated with the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C. as an Adjunct Scholar.

He is a card-carrying champion Palestinian Authority and opponent of the “Occupation,” but at least one of his views of history is on the money

“Back in the 1930s and 40s noble -minded Jews who connected at some level with Zionism were calling for a bi-national rather than exclusively Jewish state, but neither the Zionist leadership nor the Palestinian leadership wanted it which in both cases, figures,” he wrote.

“The whole thrust of the Zionist movement for most Zionists, would be a Jewish state theoretically ready to absorb as many Jews from Europe, America, and the Arab world as would be willing and able to immigrate. And since the overwhelming population in Mandate Palestine was Arab, why would the Arab leadership in Palestine consider a bi-national state as just another way of denying the Palestinians the right to self-determination?”

That is one of the first opportunities that the Arab world missed, upholding a tradition that goes back to Biblical kingdoms, which refused to let Moses lead the people of Israel through their areas on the way to the Promised Land.

Then and now, the anti-Zionists say “no” and the Jews, like Livni, say “no comment. We’ll find a way. We are not known as a Start-Up nation for nothing.”

As for the new “one-state” solution promoted if not threatened by Palestinian Authority activists as well as Jewish anti-Zionists, Schleifer commented, “The one state solution still is a noble idea but noble ideas don’t cut much ice without significant power behind it…Unfortunately, neither a powerful mass movement nor the commitment of strong willed leaders exists as yet for the one state.”

With typical Arab blindness, he wrote, “A right-wing Israeli version of one state [is] based on ethnic cleansing and annexation.” Abbas repeatedly says no Jews would be allowed in a future Palestinian Authority state, but that’s not ethnic cleansing. That is “national identity.”

The kind professor and journalist offer two options. One is a utopian presence of two states “providing both sides with an opportunity to engage people to people without threats to their respective and very different concerns, apprehensions and fears.”

He correctly dismissed that as being viable, putting all the onus, of course, on Israel that constantly creates a hopeless situation by insisting that Jews can live in Judea and Samaria, reserved for Arabs.

And it is that hopelessness that provides the second option. Schleifer wrote, “it is almost inevitable there will be Palestinian jihadi attack killing a large number of Israeli civilians — like a bomb going off at the western Wailing Wall when the plaza is filled to capacity during key Israeli holidays.

“This would provoke a terrible ethnic cleansing of the Arabs of former Jordanian Jerusalem and the West Bank. The ultra-right wing government could then annex all of the West Bank and not worry at all about the ‘demographic threat.’”

Got it? Blame Israel for hopelessness – has anyone recently read the Biblical account of Hagar who sat around waiting for God to save herself and her child Ismael instead of looking for a water bottle?

Blame Israel for hopelessness, blame Israel for the Arab’s blowing up Jews and blame Israel for exploiting the massacre to defend itself by taking charge.

Fine, blame the Jews, what do we care?

Blame the Jews for what Schleifer himself says will happen:

“Short of more sophisticated Palestinian diplomacy backed by a growing BDS movement, the settlements will continue to grow and more and more Palestinian land will be confiscated and more and more Palestinians will be harassed, if not injured or even murdered by the settlers. And the Palestinians will end up with no state.”

So for once Livni is right.

“No comment.”

U.S. Special Envoy Martin Indyk raced to Jerusalem Wednesday for emergency meetings with Israeli and Palestinian Authority negotiators over the crashing final status talks.

In Algeria for strategic security talks, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also urged Israeli and PA leaders to make one more effort to reach an agreement, warning that the Obama administration could not force peace if partners were unwilling.

“You can facilitate, you can push, you can nudge, but the parties themselves have to make fundamental decisions and compromises,” he said. “The leaders have to lead and they have to be able to see a moment when it’s there.” Kerry quoted the old adage of being able to ‘lead a horse to water but not being able to make it drink’ — an analogy that every American child is raised with.

“Now is the time to drink,” Kerry said. “The leaders need to know that.”

Last week Israel balked over the release of a final group of 30 PA terrorist incarcerated in Israeli prisons. The group included 20 Israeli Arab citizens – a controversial issue that had split the coalition government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from the start of the talks in July 2013.

The Israeli Arab prisoners acted in their terrorism under the auspices of Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Both are led by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, so it is impossible for him to close his eyes to their incarceration. More so, it is impossible for Israeli government ministers to ignore the fact that Abbas, whose nom de guerre is Abu Mazen, is in some ways as much a terrorist as those who are imprisoned. Abbas has claimed “only a few hundred thousand” Jews were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. During the years of the Bush Administration he refused to dismantle terrorist organizations as required by the Roadmap peace plan – which collapsed — and refuses to stop media incitement in the PA against Israel as well.

The prisoners were to be freed in stages linked to progress in the talks and the participation of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas – who has not been active at the negotiating table since November 2013. Further exacerbating the problem is the fact that no visible progress appears to have been made on the core issues since that time, with Israel making all the security concessions and endangering its own population.

Last Friday, instead of freeing the terrorists, Israel proposed to extend the talks and offered to free another 400 prisoners, again in stages linked as before to progress in the negotiations.

The talks are not scheduled to end until April 29.

Instead, on Monday infuriated PA leaders signed applications for membership in 15 United Nations agencies and organizations. The move is an outrageous violation of its commitment to both Israel and the United States at the outset of the talks.

Last night (Wednesday), Fatah faction leader Mohamed Shtayyeh also threatened in a statement in Arabic to Sky News to submit an application to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague – a second violation.

The PA committed at the start of negotiations with Israel in July 2013 not to seek membership in international organizations – including the International Criminal Court at The Hague – until the conclusion of talks on April 29.

But Shtayyeh announced that the PA is also no longer willing to “negotiate” on any issue other than borders and demanded Israel present a map of new borders based on the 1949 Armistice lines, also known as the “1967 lines.” This is a third violation.

The “1967 lines” term is used with bitterness by Arabs and many in the international community to refer to the areas occupied by Jordan from 1948 to 1967, whose borders were dissolved after Israel won the 1967 Six Day War.

If Israel is unable to reach agreement with the PA on borders, the PA threatened to submit applications for membership in 63 international organizations. The strategy is being used as a means of gaining de facto legitimacy as a as an independent sovereign nation.

Moreover, Shtayyeh blamed Israel for the action, saying it came in response to the government decision not to release the final group of terrorist prisoners last week.

PA envoy to the United Nations Riyad Mansour added in a statement to the Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency – a PA mouthpiece — that the entity is “eligible for membership in up to 550 international organizations.”

Here is an on-the-spot play-by-play report on Wednesday’s action in the Peace Talks Charades.

Tzipi Livin screws up her face and throws a spit ball at the Palestinian Authority, which swings and misses.

John Kerry calls Abbas and reaches first base.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman steps up to the mound and pitches a curve ball by announcing he will vote against any proposal to release Arab murderers who carry Israeli citizenship.

Martin Indyk takes a walk to Jerusalem and scores a triple play with Livni and Saeb Erekat.

Commentator Samantha Power puts in her two cents, which is about all it is worth, and opines that unilateral actions by the Palestinian Authority “will be a profound threat to Israel and devastating to the peace process.”

Duh.

Housing Minister Uri Ariel, playing right field, urges Netanyahu to find another game and cancel the Oslo Accords, forgetting that they sank long ago in Foggy Bottom except when the State Dept. fishes them out for stale news.

Tourism Minister Uzi Landau, the government’s biggest windbag, carries his bat, points to the bleachers, and says that Israel can punish the Palestinian Authority by annexing Judea and Samaria and slapping sanctions on Ramallah.

His home swing misses by a mile, and he takes a shower.

The Arab League, playing shortstop, forces everyone to take a rain check for a week, when it will meet to grunt and groan and come up with a face-saving pitch for Abbas.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry phoned Mahmoud Abbas, and Israeli negotiator Tzipi Livni sat down with her counterpart Saeb Erekat Wednesday, proving that the best way to get both sides talking is to create a crisis.

Livni officially is Justice Minister and unofficially is Kerry’s Under Secretary of Concessions. She talked tough earlier in the day, declaring that the Palestinian Authority “has breached its obligations by applying to the United Nations” and that “if they want a state, they need to understand that it will only be established on the negotiating table.”

Livni is good at talking tough. She is an abysmal failure at even showing a muscle, let alone using it.

She sat down with Erekat and Martin Indyk, President Obama’s Middle East salesman. Even before the discussion, she already was parroting the State Dept. line. “Even when peace seems very far away, and when the other side’s conduct is wrong,… we will return to the negotiating table; we are obligated to return to talks.”

A real fighter she is.

She said so herself, asserting that neither the Palestinian Authority  nor anyone else “can dictate to us whether or not we are fighting for peace.” Her idea of fighting for peace is hitting Israel over the head. Maybe if she hits herself on the head something will sink in, but until then, we can expect luvvy-duvvy words by tomorrow morning on how Erekat really is a peace partner and that the peace talks can be saved, meaning Kerry can be saved.

Despite all the headlines reporting the play-by-play of an imminent collapse in talks, Abbas and Erekat are not about to walk away without the release of the fourth batch of terrorists. Joining the he Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, one of 15 U.N.-linked bodies that have received an official Palestinian Authority request for membership, is not going help get the murderers out of jail.

Kerry kept up contact with Abbas on Wednesday, phoning him and getting assurance that they would continue to talk in the next few days.

Netanyahu has been conspicuously silent, enjoying a rare moment of peace and quiet while everyone else runs around and bumps into each other, knocks each other down and then tries to pick up the pieces.

The New York Times’ editorial on Wednesday called the idea of using Jonathan Pollard as a bargaining chip for peace talks “a lamentable sign of America’s desperation to keep both sides talking.”

The newspaper does not dictate to Obama, but it more often than not reflects his thinking, or the other way around.

In this case, it is questionable if Obama was thinking, and the Times was unusually harsh in its criticism of him and his administration.

It stated that the proposal came from Washington, although it is not known whether the White House or Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu initiated the idea. It may be a moot issue because the general reaction in the United States has been negative, and the Palestinian Authority apparently shot it down.

Mahmoud Abbas and his aides reportedly were furious after hearing about the idea because there is no way they will let Israel get Pollard while arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti remains in an Israeli prison cell.

The emergence of the convicted spy Jonathan Pollard as a bargaining chip in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations is a lamentable sign of America’s desperation to keep both sides talking. Peace between Israelis and Palestinians can be achieved only if they want it for themselves, something that is very much in doubt right now.

The editorial called the proposals a “bad idea [that] would do nothing to advance progress on the core issues of a peace deal.”

Palestinian Authority officials handed over requests to 15 United Nations bodies on Wednesday, signaling a snub of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the end of his Peace Talks stage show.

It ain’t so.

As usual, Mahmoud Abbas and his henchmen are playing with words. The PA dramatically announced Tuesday night that its top committee voted unanimously to ask to join 15 United Nations agencies, violating a promise Abbas made to Kerry eight months ago that the PA would not take such unilateral steps during the talks that officially have another four weeks to go.

The official excuse is that since Israel did not come through last with the release of the final batch of terrorists, including card-carrying Israeli citizen-murderers whom the government never promised to free, the PA can do as it pleases.

After Abbas ostensibly pressed “delete” on Kerry’s program, the Secretary of State triumphantly announced, “Let me make it absolutely clear. None of the agencies that President Abbas signed tonight involve the UN. None of them. And President Abbas has given his word to me that he will keep his agreement and that he intends to negotiate through the end of the month of April.”

Either Kerry is again showing he is ignorant, or Abbas is again proving he is a liar, right?

Almost wrong. Kerry showed he is only partly ignorant, and Abbas showed he not a liar but just a con man.

Remember how the Obama administration and the media establishment always mouth off about the Palestinian Authority’s “negotiations” that are NewSpeak for an ultimatum?

Now add “United Nations Agencies” to the list to the New Arab Dictionary of Twisted English.

Following is the list of the 15 U.N. “agencies” that have received the official Palestinian Authority requests to join:

1. The Four Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and the First Additional Protocol
2. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations
3. The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations
4. The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in armed conflict
5. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
6. The Hague Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations Concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land
7. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
8. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties
9. The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
10. The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
11. The United Nations Convention against Corruption
12. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
13. The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid
14. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
15. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Kerry is right. They are not U.N. agencies. He is wrong because indeed they are connected with the United Nations in one form or another.

They are “treaties” and “conventions” but not agencies, a term reserved for such enlightened institutions as the International Monetary Fund and the World Health Organization.

This is the official list of U.N. agencies:

1. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
2. International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
3. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
4. International Labor Organization (ILO)
5. International Maritime Organization (IMO)
6. International Monetary Fund (IMF)
7. International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
8. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
9. United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)
10. Universal Postal Union (UPU)
11. World Bank Group
11.1 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD)
11.2 International Finance Corporation (IFC)
11.3 International Development Association (IDA)
12. World Health Organization (WHO)
13. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
14. World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
15. World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)
16. Former specialized agencies
17. Related Organizations
17.1 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization Preparatory Commission
17.2 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
17.3 Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
17.4 World Trade Organization (WTO)

The Palestinian Authority has not asked to join any of them. It once again is huffing and puffing but not ready to blow the house down. Be patient, because that time will come. If President Barack Obama has his way, it will happen around January 21, 2017, the day after Hillary Clinton, or by some miracle a Republican nominee, will step into the White House.

No one should scoff too much at the PA requests to join the 15 U.N. treaties and conventions because they certainly would give Abbas an entry pass to official agencies. That is the next step, either next month, if Kerry finally gets tired of his games, or next year, or as long as he can write more charters for this black comedy.

For the time, being everything is on hold for a week because that is when the Arab League, which is calling the shots for Abbas, meets to decide the next maneuver.

That gives Obama time to parachute to Earth from outer space, where he dealt the Pollard card to bribe Israel into another immoral release of murders.

Abbas can be satisfied if Israel does not get Pollard. The whole point of this play is not to win anything but just to make sure the other side loses something, and Israeli officials reportedly said Wednesday that Abbas vetoed  being part of the Free Pollard movement, unintentionally doing Obama a giant favor.

So what will the Arabs have lost? They will have lost more time, because as every day passes, his deceit and corruption eat away at the Palestinian Authority’s rotten foundations, which will collapse like a Ponzi scheme.