Senior Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat threatened on Tuesday that the Palestinian Authority will carry out its threat to charge Israel with war crimes in the international court if it does not agree to direct talks for establishing a Palestinian Authority independent country based on the PA’s definition of borders.

He also said that it will be Israel’s fault if Palestinian Authority violence and terror escalates unless Israel agrees to its conditions for talks, which U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said must begin by Friday. Facing total rejection, Kerry already has asked PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas for an extension of the deadline until June 20, according to the Palestinian Authority.

Erekat’s rhetoric is nothing new, and that is exactly why it may not work this time.

Virtually every American reporter who does not have an obvious agenda has learned that the Palestinian Authority has been twisting everyone around its twinkie for 20 years by making up its own rules of the game every time Israel is ready to play ball.

Abbas is assuming that Kerry will literally sell out Israel for the sake of continuing the dead, buried and decomposed peace process.

Given the grumbling social mood in the United States and the growing impatience of the American electorate for their government’s involvement in the quicksand of dead-end foreign affairs, Abbas is in for a nasty surprise when President Barack Obama finally lives up to his word that there is no sense trying to force an agreement when there is none to be made.

While  Abbas continues to say the “ball is in Israel’s court,” he actually has taken the ball home ever since he took the audacious move to tell President Obama to get lost while he went to the United Nations for a General Assembly resolution recognizing a Palestinian Authority state exactly as he wants. Jerusalem would the PA’s capital, Israel would return to the Temporary Armistice lines of 1949-1967, and millions of foreign Arabs would flood Israel and reduce the Jews to a minority.

Abbas figures that the resolution is a stepping stone is in his grand winner-take-all strategy, even though there will be no winner and no one will take it all.

After the General Assembly resolution, Abbas won Palestinian Authority membership on UNESCO and pulled out his “war crime” threat.

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki then generously promised Kerry the PA would not seek membership on the International Court of Justice, as a “goodwill gesture” for Israel to think twice before rejecting the idea of accepting PA demands.

Al-Maliki said the PA was giving Kerry time to manipulate things the way Abbas wants.

Now that time has all but run out, Erekat pulled out the war crime threat again while crying on the shoulders of journalist and diplomats, saying,  ”If people like us don’t succeed to make peace with the Israeli government, what will the Palestinian people think?”

For good measure, he poured honey all over Kerry, stating that “Kerry’s failure cannot be an option.”

Kerry told American Jews on Monday that if the peace process fails, as if it hasn’t already, “What will happen if the Palestinian economy implodes? If the Palestinian security forces dissolve? If the Palestinian Authority fails?”

Erekat answered that question on Tuesday by threatening to charge Israel with war crimes, which is going to be chapter 2543, more or less, in the Decline and Fall of the Peace Process.

The Israeli government has announced a new step in plans to build 300 new homes in Beit El, in  northern Samaria, just as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is trying to convince Mahmoud Abbas to return to talks if Israel slaps a freeze on building for Jews in Judea and Samaria.

Reports from Israeli sources earlier this week stated that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has buckled under pressure from Kerry, and probably President Barack Obama, to freeze construction to bring Abbas back to the so-called negotiating table.

“Negotiations” in Arab Doublespeak means that Israel must accept Palestinian Authority territorial and political demands or they will be forced down its throat, either by the United Nations or by “resistance,” another Doublespeak word, which means terror.

No government  official has denied the reports of a “de facto” building freeze, and Prime Minister Netanyahu is conveniently in China.

Kerry hosted the government’s unofficial Minister for the Peace Process, Tzipi Livni, in Washington last week and continued discussions with her in Rome this week, where he said he will return to Israel in two weeks.

Journalists covering the State Department asked why he is returning after having been here last month, but the reports of the unofficial freeze provide the obvious answer.

But smack in the middle of Kerry’s Big Momentum – run as fast as you can with the ball so that everyone is too dazzled to see that the ball is a bomb – the government announced the next step for building 296 more homes in Beit El.

The town is not just another community in Samaria. More than 6.000 national religious Jews live there. Beit El is a symbol of the national religious movement in Judea and Samaria. A yeshiva bearing the town’s Biblical name has wide influence across the country. It is home to two of the most prominent national religious rabbis in Israel, Rabbi Zalman Melamed, head of Yeshiva Beit El, and Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, who is widely respected and consulted by many Jews who are not part of the “club.”

After the announcement of the preliminary approval of the homes, the Palestinian Authority immediately said everyone can forget about trying to dig up the bones of the peace process.

As with almost every announcement of building new homes, the one in Beit El refers only to one of several bureaucratic steps before the bulldozers can start digging, not less than a year from now.

Israel has been through this time after time, the most famous incident being the announcement of another bureaucratic stage having been completed for building homes in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem, claimed by the Palestinian Authority.

The news broke just as Vice President Joe Biden was landing in Israel, causing high tension between Jerusalem and Washington for a long time.

Coincidental or not with Kerry’s dream for resumed direct talks between Netanyahu and Abbas, the Beit El housing project proves that Israel is trying to “sabotage” Kerry’s efforts, according to senior PA negotiator Saeb Erekat.

“We condemn this new decision which is proof that the Israeli government wants to sabotage and ruin the US administration’s efforts to revive the peace process,” he said. “This is a message to the American administration and a blow to the peace process. This aims to drag the region into violence instead of peace and stability.”

Violence.

Erekat did not even have the diplomacy to say “resistance.”

It is out-and-out violence, and obviously Kerry would blame Israel if the Arabs kill more Jews. Otherwise he would have to go back on his statement earlier this year that the proof that Abbas is such a great peace partner can be found in the fact that not even one Jew was murdered by Palestinian Authority terrorists in 2012.

What about 2011? Well, that is history. Let’s look at the present and not the past and talk peace.

And what about the present the year 2013? Uh, yeah, well, sure, a Palestinian Authority terrorist stabbed to death a father of five, but that was an isolated incident, and after all, the murderer was not a member of a known terrorist gang.

Kerry does not have to defend himself. He has Livni to do that for him. Both of them desperately need a peace agreement, Kerry because he wants to be president and Livni because she needs something to justify her being politically alive. The latest polls shows that her party would win zero seats in if elections were held today.

The Palestinian Authority revealed Monday that it refused to agree with visiting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s request to change a “few words” in the 2002 Saudi Peace Initiative.

The Saudi peace plan promises “normalization” of relations with Israel – without express recognition of the country – in return for Israel’s retreating back to the 1949 Temporary Armistice Lines that existed until 1967 and accepting the immigration of several million foreign Arabs.

Even the most leftist of Israelis, except for those really on the fringe of the fringe, have rejected the demand for allowing a flood of Arabs to destroy the Jewish character of the country.

But Kerry is undaunted.

In typical State Dept. tunnel thinking, he dug up the Saudi Peace Plan in an effort win the support of the Arab League and, according to senior PA negotiator Saeb Erekat, asked Ramallah to make a small compromise in the wording.

“Kerry asked us to change a few words in the Arab Peace Initiative but we refused,” Erekat told the Voice of Palestine radio station Sunday, according to the Washington Post.

The Palestinian Authority really has no reason to compromise.

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has carefully carried out a one-track-mind strategy for eight years, replacing Yasser Arafat’s pistol on the belt with a suit and tie and globetrotting to win international support.

While official Palestinian Authority media honor suicide bombers and without a wink show Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza maps of Palestine with borders of the Mediterranean Coast and the Jordan River, Abbas has played along with the Bush administrations without committing to anything.

Feeling full confidence that he no longer needs the United States, Abbas went to the United Nations in November and won his long-sought recognition, although only in a resolution, that recognizes all of his demands without recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

Kerry is trying to turn back the point of no return, and even after Erekat said he turned him down, the Secretary of State, was seen in Israel without blindfolders on Monday even though he said he sees “a road ahead” on the two-state solution for peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Kerry met President Shimon Peres on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day and participated in the national wreath-laying ceremony at Yad VaShem.

Invoking the same evangelical-like tone of President Barack Obama when he visit Israel last month, Kerry said, “You have to believe in the possibilities to be able to get there. You and I believe in them and I’m convinced there is a road ahead.”

The road ahead for Abbas is elsewhere.

While Kerry was solemnly saying that the wailing sirens of Yom HaShoah had a “profound impact” on him, Abbas, whose doctoral thesis was on Holocaust denial, was on his way to Qatar to meet with Arab League diplomats for the next step on how to negotiate without negotiating.

Early Friday morning, a group of some 200 Palestinians, supported by international activists, built a tent city in E1 area separating Ma’ale Adumim from Jerusalem, and announced the creation of the outpost “Bab al-Shams” (Gate of the Sun).

Civil Administration officials arrived in the area, and issued an order to remove this “fresh invasion” off the state-owned land. During the day, Friday, police prevented the entry of additional activists and senior PLO officials Saeb Erekat and Hanan Ashrawi.

“The soldiers treated us improperly and savagely before they forced us to go back to Ramallah,” Ashrawi told Ma’an.

A vehicle carrying Ashrawi and PA minister of social affairs, Majida al-Masri, was stopped and searched at a checkpoint, with soldiers preventing the officials from continuing to the E1 area, despite holding Jerusalem ID cards.

Ashrawi said earlier that she fully supported and encouraged non-violent popular resistance against Israeli occupation, praising the activists for their “creative” means of protecting Palestinian land.

Al-Masri also congratulated the activists for their actions, saying it provided an example which should be followed across the occupied West Bank.

“Establishing a Palestinian village on Palestinian land slated for confiscation by Israel for thousands of settlement units is a form of popular resistance to the Israeli occupation and land theft,” the PA official said.

“Bab al-Shams must be set up in all Palestinian districts, in Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, Tubas, the Jordan Valley, Salfit, Qalqiliya, Jenin, and Tulkarem. Organizers of such protests must receive support,” al-Masri added.

It was reported, however, that Mustafa Barghouti, member of the Palestinian “The Day After” committee, visited the outpost this morning.

Israel’s military has also prevented activists from neighboring areas access to the “protest village” since Friday.

“We only have our determination, and it will not be easy to expel us from our homes. We will use our experience and skills to remain on the land,” local activist Abdullah Abu Rahma told Ma’an.

Leading activist Salah al-Khawaja said that the group is determined to stay on the land. “This is Palestinian land, it is our right to build our villages on our land whenever we like. We will not accept displacement and we will stay,” he said.

Four Bedouin families from the area, claiming ownership of the land, petitioned the High Court to prevent the demolition.

The petition, filed by attorney Tawfiq Jabarin, states that “the tents were erected on private lands as part of a tourism project to attract tourists who wish to learn about the heritage of the Bedouin living in the area, and enjoy the desert Bedouin experience.”

According to the petition, the project is called “Albadia” and supposedly includes “a variety of fun activities to encourage familiarity with Bedouin Arab culture,” and that the “Initiative involves seasonal winter and spring period only.”

Following the petition, the High Court issued a temporary order staying the evacuation of the area as long as there are no security issues that require an urgent evacuation. The state, however, will appeal to the High Court tonight (Saturday) to cancel the stay order, and enable the evacuation of the outpost.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu ordered the closing of all access roads, and for now the area is declared a closed military zone.

The activists established the outpost in reaction to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to hasten the planning process of Mevaseret Adumim, the neighborhood that should be constructed in the E1 area, between Ma’aleh Adumim and Jerusalem.

Netanyahu’s decision caused a wave of international condemnation and calls for Israel to change its mind.

Thousands Of Radicals Poised To Fight Assad

At least 5,000 global jihadists are positioned near Syria’s borders with Turkey and Lebanon attempting to infiltrate Syria to aid the opposition fighting Bashar Assad’s regime, a senior Syrian government official told to this column.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Syrian military hopes to entirely quell the opposition by the start of Ramadan on July 19. Russian advisers in Syria seem to have a more realistic timeline of September to beat back the opposition, the official noted.

The Syrian plan is for Assad to remain in power and to hold an international conference with participation from Iran aimed at rebuilding Syria, the official said.

While Russia continues to arm Syria, countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been arming and financing the opposition, with the U.S. saying it is providing “non-lethal” aid, including communications assistance. Reports have claimed the U.S. is coordinating arms shipments to the rebel forces.

The claim of global jihadists attempting to infiltrate Syria is just the latest report of al Qaeda-linked groups fighting alongside the U.S.-supported Free Syrian Army.

It Wasn’t AIDS, Says Chief PA Official

Despite claims to the contrary, a confidential medical report released to the Palestinian Authority from the French hospital at which Yasir Arafat died did not list AIDS in the late PLO leader’s bloodstream, according to the PA’s chief negotiator.

“I’ve seen the French report. And it excluded AIDS. I can confirm that to you,” said the PA’s Saeb Erekat on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s WABC Radio. “I think people in this region jump to conclusions. The reasons [of death] are unknown to us,” he said.

The PA last week agreed to exhume Arafat’s body amid new allegations he was poisoned with the radioactive element polonium-210.

Asked whether the French report listed any radioactive material associated with Arafat’s death, Erekat stated, “I reviewed the report of the French hospital at that time and it said that we had investigated everything possible. It wasn’t on it.”

Erekat said Arafat’s body could be unearthed within days. “President Arafat’s body can be exhumed the minute we declare the religious and the family procedures, which we are doing. Could be in the next few days.”

He went on to call for an “international investigation, a credible committee that could take the matter from A to Z. That’s very, very essential.”

Asked whether it’s possible Arafat’s close circle was involved in any alleged assassination, Erekat replied: “I think we need to know who gave the orders, who provided drugs, who were the elements to carry out the assassination if it’s an assassination.”

Landing On… Asteroids

What does President Obama have in common with former presidential candidate Ross Perot, director James Cameron, Google’s Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt?

All personalities are involved in attempts to land on asteroids in highly costly efforts that have experts conflicted about the possibilities of success and whether the ultimate benefits outweigh the expenses.

Cameron, Page, Schmidt and Perot are behind a private company, Planetary Resources, that is planning to not only land on an asteroid but mine it for resources. The company seeks to launch the first in a series of space telescopes into low-Earth orbit in an attempt to find asteroids to potentially mine for profit.

Their dreamy plan may be aided by Obama’s new directives to NASA. The president has reorganized the country’s space agency with the goal of landing on an asteroid.

His new directives were immediately slammed by famed astronauts Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan, who both told a Senate Commerce Committee hearing that Obama’s space plans would harm NASA.

One of Obama’s key advisers on the asteroid scheme was White House science adviser John Holdren. Landing on an asteroid, Holdren argued, and giving it a well-timed nudge “would demonstrate once and for all that we’re smarter than the dinosaurs and can avoid what they didn’t.”

FrontPageMag.com noted that Holdren has endorsed “surrender of sovereignty” to “a comprehensive Planetary Regime” that would control all the world’s resources, direct global redistribution of wealth, oversee the “de-development” of the West, control a World Army and taxation regime, and enforce world population limits.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told his cabinet Sunday that he is pessimistic about prospects for peace based on current negotiations, following volatile meetings between Israeli and Palestinian Authority representatives in Amman, Jordan.

“As things stand now, according to what happened over the past few days – when the Palestinians refused even to discuss Israel’s security needs with us – the signs are not particularly good,” Netanyahu said during his weekly meeting in Jerusalem.

In Ramallah, PA President Mahmoud Abbas told Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore on Saturday that “Israeli intransigence” was behind the talks’ failure, saying Israel did not present a “clear vision” of border and security issues.  He said the PA remains committed to “end[ing] the Israeli occupation” and establishing a Palestinian state which would contain lands currently inside the borders of post-Six Day War Israel, with eastern Jerusalem as its capital.  PA officials criticized Israel’s plan for preserving a majority of Israeli communities in the historic Jewish regions of Judea and Samaria.

On Saturday, an acrimonious spat broke out between  Israeli and PA negotiators in Amman, which is said to have stunned the Jordanian hosts who had brokered the renewed talks.

Leader of the Israeli negotiating team Yitzhak Molcho and head PA negotiator Saeb Erekat exchanged verbal jabs after Erekat prevented a senior Israeli officer from elaborating on Israel’s position on security arrangements.

Molcho brought with him to the Saturday meeting the head of the IDF strategic planning division, Brigadier-General Assaf Orion, to present Israel’s detailed position on security.  Erekat refused to hear Orion, saying the Brigadier-General should present his statements to the PA delegation as a written document, telling the Israeli team that he did not “have the mandate” to negotiate security decisions without a detailed document from the Israeli delegation on the issues of borders and security.

To that, Molcho responded that if Erekat does not have a mandate to discuss those crucial issues, “maybe you should leave and bring someone in your place who does”.

Molcho also criticized the PA for allowing incitement against Israel in its press, and read a number of quotes from the Mufti of Jerusalem, who was broadcast at a Fatah conference on Palestinian television last week for calling for the murder of Jews.

The PA has already announced that the next meeting between Israel and the PA in Amman will be the last.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will be arriving in Israel in the near future to press Israel on the issue of negotiations with the PA.  He will also meet with Israeli leaders on issues pertaining to an attack on Iran.

On Friday, the Obama administration urged Israelis and Palestinians to continue holding talks in Amman.

Palestinian Authority chief negotiator Saeb Erekat recently expressed concern that Israel will launch a new large-scale attack on Gaza, following escalated rocket attacks on Israeli civilian areas.

Dear Mr. Erekat,

Your expressed fear of possible large-scale retaliation by Israel against Hamas gives me a tingly, warm feeling. I feel your concern and empathize with what such action might do to Hamas and the Gazans living under their boots.

However…

You know, I’m sure – how can you not know – that Hamas has been lobbing rockets into Israel for months and has been escalating the frequency and number of such deadly projectiles. One of those missiles barely missed a kindergarten.

But have courage and faith, Mr. Erekat. Your concerns are echoed by many if not most countries around the world whose favorite entertainment is the delegitimization of Israel.

You really need not be concerned with what Israel may or may not do. Look around you. Listen for a moment. Do you hear anyone protest the ongoing bombardment of Israel by Hamas? Have you heard a sound from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon?

Did you hear any protest or rebuke from the UN concerning Hamas’s attempts to murder Israeli citizens? Did you hear any loud protestations from England, France or Russia? You didn’t? Neither did anyone else.

But should your fears of an Israeli operation against Hamas be realized, rest assured that indignation and condemnation (of Israel, of course) will suddenly burst out all over the world. “Israeli War Crimes” will again scream from headlines and become a hot topic in the UN Security Council.

Remember the last time Israel and Hamas fought? Do you recall all the rebuke and condemnation Israel received? You must have had a field day with all the talk of Nazi-like Israeli murderers and poor, suffering Palestinians.

So you see, Mr. Erekat, there is absolutely no need to fret over a possible Israeli attack against Hamas. If it occurs, the UN, the EU, the Arab League – just about everyone – will stand with you shoulder-to-shoulder and force Israel to stop its ugly aggression.

Of course, once a cease-fire is forced on Israel, the launching of rockets from Gaza into Israel will resume, and after the inevitable Security Council anti-Israel resolution and the equally inevitable arm-twisting by the United States, whatever is still left of the so-called blockade on Gaza will be completely lifted – which will allow Hamas to freely import more armaments to be used against Israel.

And the cycle will continue. Hamas bombards, Israel eventually retaliates, the world condemns Israel.

Fret not, Mr. Erekat. Hamas is in good hands.

Isaac Kohn is senior vice president of Primecare Consulting Corporation. His articles and op-eds have appeared in The Jewish Press and other media outlets.