Quartet should just quit blowing smoke

what is the quartet and why should anyone care? now that abbas has filed the palestinians' statehood petition with the UN, these clowns are back to urging the two sides to go back to negotiations:

Quartet Calls Israelis, Palestinians to Negotiating Table | Middle East | English: "The Middle East Quartet is urging the Israelis and Palestinians to return to the negotiating table within the next month and to make substantial progress on final status issues so they can achieve a two-state solution by next year. the Quartet’s push came as the Palestinians submitted their application for full U.N. membership on Friday.

The Quartet met Friday afternoon after both Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly annual debate.

The group, which is made up of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations, then issued a statement calling the two parties back to the negotiating table."

but the israelis have already promised that if abbas did the statehood thing, they would make the palestinian people pay for their insolence. my mom tells stories about how the germans in WWII would kill 100 villagers if someone killed one german soldier. for the israelis, just standing up and ignoring their edicts gets the palestinians the same treatment -- or worse.

besides, let's be real. the only players with any say-so are the US and israel. if the international community backs the palestinians 100 percent but netanyahu tells his butt-boy obama to get on all fours and bark like a dog, obama is going to do it -- and say thank you for making me look like a silly whore!

at that rate, what do you suppose negotiations are going to accomplish? i'd say not a hell of a lot. it's going to take pressure coming from other directions to get any movement on these issues -- and there's nothing on the immediate horizon with the ability to make that happen. egypt, turkey and syria are interesting, but at the moment, nothing more.

it will be interesting, however, where the next war kicks off in the MENA region. if it's iran, well, then we might very well see a very, very fluid situation evolve -- although it will be a really ugly mess, and one the US will regret for a very, very long time.