The Palestinian leadership follows with disdain and frustration the establishment of the new Israeli government: “With the outgoing government we thought it could not get any worse, but it seems that we were wrong,” a senior official in the entourage of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Al-Monitor. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did say that the advantage of the extremist nature of the Israeli government to-be is that now the Palestinian statehood issue would be put to the test, without international demands for incremental progress. “It’s a make-it-or-break-it time,” he said.

The Palestinian leadership, according to this source, is planning at the very outset of the new government to put a policy strategy in place to try to convince the international community to deal with the Palestinian issue again, despite the focus on the Iran negotiations.

The official outlines several phases of this strategy. At first, the Palestinians intend to reveal to the world the rejectionist nature of the new Israeli government. With this goal in mind, they have already passed messages to the US administration and to key EU governments stating Palestinian readiness to renew negotiations with the Israeli government by starting off at the very same point where the previous negotiations left off (the Ehud Olmert government negotiations and the negotiations orchestrated by Secretary of State John Kerry).

The Palestinian source told Al-Monitor that messages have been recently conveyed by the Israeli leadership proclaiming its readiness to increase economic cooperation with both the West Bank and Gaza. He expressed suspicion, estimating that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was aiming for “economic peace” only — in other words, guaranteeing Israel's security through economic measures. “That is categorically rejected by Abbas,” said the source.