Obama Changes Pressure Point,' Phones Abbas to Push for Talks

Prime Minister Netanyahu announced candidly while in the USA that he is waiting and willing for direct negotiations without precoditions. That seems to have shifted the focus of U.S. efforts from monitoring building in Jerusalem to requesting face to face talks from the PA. U.S. President Barack Obama changed his "phone diplomacy target Friday, calling Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in an attempt to push the PA into beginning direct talks with Israel on a new PA state.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had been on the receiving end of most of the president's phone calls to regional leaders in his demands for more Israeli concessions to Abbas to coax him into direct talks. President Obama book-ended his phone call with Abbas with flowery praise for his efforts to bring about the establishment of the PA as a country, but the point of his call was clear: stop dilly-dallying and start talking.