Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas arrived in New York with supreme confidence that the United Nations would approve Palestinian statehood and give Israel a black eye. But a funny thing happened on the East Side that sidetracked Abbas's agenda, leaving him sputtering against a joint move by the most potent international players who confronted him with a starkly different course that Israel readily embraced. To parse what actually happened in New York, one has to recognize that, in delving again into the morass of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there actually were two proceedings going on. While the cameras were focused on Abbas strutting to the podium of the UN General Assembly, there were more significant, behind-the-scenes meetings of the Quartet -- the United States, the European Union, Russia and the UN. And the Quartet, instead of endorsing Palestinian statehood, put all its influence behind a quite different move to get Abbas to sit down with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and resume serious negotiations --- something Netanyahu repeatedly advocated for the last year. And here was the real rub: The Quartet's statement called for resumption of bilateral talks "without conditions" -- a....
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