One of the problems of political negotiations without a clear reference point is that the parties, especially the stronger party, can change the rules of the game at will. And the absence of a neutral referee on the field allows such a strong party to get away with regularly moving the goal posts.

This is exactly what is happening in the Palestinian-Israeli talks. It began with the Israelis refusing to accept the principle of the 1967 borders and suspend settlement expansion as a reference point, and continued with Israeli negotiators banning US officials from entering the negotiation room.

Palestinians and Israelis have agreed to keep the talks going for nine months. For Israel, talks could go on for nine years as long as the talks masqueraded their continued occupation, but for Palestinians, this meant talking while Israel continued to take away Palestinian lands intended for the future Palestinian state.

The agreement by Israel to release pre-Oslo prisoners in four stages during the nine-month period sealed Israel’s assurance that Palestinian negotiators would not walk out of the talks for any reason whatsoever. Even though the prisoner release was a previous Israeli commitment in the 1999 Sharm el-Sheikh Agreement, the Palestinian side also agreed not to pursue any further UN membership attempts during the nine-month negotiations period.