With the general commotion in Israel over the security flare-up in the north on the one hand and the possible indictment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the other, one tends to forget a key player in the Middle Eastern region — the Palestinians.
Visiting Ramallah these days, one comes away with a sense of the deep despair the Palestinian leadership is feeling. Faced with the radicalization of the pro-Iranian axis and with a recent surge of violence in the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas finds himself between a rock and a hard place. While he does not want to appear reluctant to join a possible regional cycle of uprising, violence is actually the last thing he is interested in.
