This had been the Palestinian's strategy all along ...

In case it isn't clear to everyone yet, the Palestinians have more or less come out and said what it is they want, and what they have been trying to accomplish for the past two years since Obama became President.

From Haaretz:

Palestinians: Clinton should have blamed Israel for failure of Mideast talks

Palestinian officials said that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton should have blamed Israel for the failure of the latest Mideast efforts.

The officials reacted on Saturday to a Clinton speech before Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy's seventh annual forum in Washington, in which she said Israelis and Palestinians both bear responsibility for the failure of the direct talks that took place in September.

If you haven't gotten the message yet, you haven't been paying attention. The Palestinians don't want to negotiate. The believe, accurately, that they can't get what they want through negotiations. So they have been busy stalling the process with preconditions and with trying to assign the blame for the inevitable failure on the Israelis.

First they demanded a settlement freeze. Obama, in his ignorance, agreed. Then when Israeli actually froze settlement construction the Palestinians waited for nine out of the ten months of the freeze before coming to the negotiating table.

Then when it looked like the U.S. had offered enough incentives to Israel to enact another freeze, the Palestinians made it clear that they wouldn't negotiate if the freeze didn't include Jerusalem; something Israel would never do.

The Palestinians are making demands about entering negotiations that are supposed to be the subject of the negotiations themselves.

Yet, somehow there are still people out there who place the blame on Israel or on Netanyahu. Bibi has been practically begging Abbas to negotiate and has made unprecedented concessions as well.

The Palestinians have been steadfast in their refusal to do anything, ANYTHING, that could even remotely be construed as productive, or in the spirit of compromise that the negotiations will require if they are to be successful.

The Palestinians have been leading Obama around on a leash since day-one and they see no reason to stop now. They see an opportunity to take a unilateral step, either at the U.N. or simply through recognition by other countries, that will drastically change the situation here. With Obama in power, they just might be successful.