The Palis finally realized they were being gamed. Look for Hamas to announce it is willing to moderate and recognize Isreal in the context of a peace agreement.
No, more accurately, they gamed themselves into a corner. Everybody focuses on Gaza and the West Bank because those are the meaningful issues in a purely strategic sense, but for Abbas, there is a bigger problem, one that the PLO itself created, that prevents him from signing any reasonable peace deal.
The issue is all the Palestinians that the PLO has locked in concentration camps for the last 60 years, aka "refugees" in "refugee camps". Refugee camps that the PLO has forcibly prevented them from leaving. Israel tried to settle them at one point, building houses and whatnot--the PLO grieved it to the UN, and Israel stopped. Ditto in Lebanon and Syria. Only in Jordan, after the PLO was forcibly evicted, have Palestinian "refugees" got something like a normal life, allowed to work in ordinary jobs, participate in society, etc.
It doesn't get much play in the West but the PLO has been repeating a mantra to the people in those camps all this time: the refugees aren't leaving the camps until they "return" to Israel. This is no small thing -- those "refugees" have suffered incredible hardship because of the PLO's refusal to let them integrate. They COULD have all been leading normal, productive lives by now, with jobs, kids in schools, all the stuff other people in Syria, Lebanon, and even the West Bank can do. But they haven't been able to, because the PLO has prevented them from leaving the camps via force, legal writ, and propaganda. All this time they have been told -- and probably believe, as the only way to make their really shittly lives make sense -- that they making this incredible multi-generational sacrifice for the benefit of the Palestinian nation, so that Israel can be destroyed. The PLO has insisted on this. All the way through the peace talks.
So here's the thing for Abbas: The PLO have painted themselves into a corner over this issue. Everybody knows the refugees are never going to go to Israel, except perhaps some small token number. But the PLO has lied to them, Abbas has lied to them, and refused to let them out of the camp.
The PLO's idea was to keep pressure on Israel by creating a refugee problem -- a problem created by the PLO itself, but blamed on Israel.
If Abbas were to agree to any peace deal whatsoever, anything that recognized that Israel was going to continue to exist without being annihilated by Palestinians, in particular, without being flooded with millions of Palestinian "refugees", those people will kill him. I am not joking -- they will kill him. They won't just kick him out of office, they will burn down his office, and put his head on a spike. Or blow him up with a suicide bomb. Something they know how to do.
So the PLO has been talking out of both sides of its mouth, telling the peace negotiators that they are willing to make a reasonable deal, but telling the refugees that they will never make a reasonable deal.
What has to happen is this -- the PLO needs to be excluded from the peace process. Somebody else needs to step up. Either elections can be held, or perhaps Israel can shift to negotiate with Hamas, or some other group, if Hamas ever come around to the idea of not destroying Israel. Somebody who HASN'T been lying to the refugees, who CAN go make a reasonable deal, and then go to the camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, as well as WB/Gaza and tell those people the truth -- hey look this is the best we can do, your life sucked for nothing, but please come to Palestine, we'll try and help you get some compensation and we'll try and settle you in a home.
Abbas can't say that. But somebody has to.
