Shreying Gevalt here, keeping calm there

It’s Sunday! Nearly! Sept. 26! All hell is going to break loose!

Or something.

Sunday is when "it" expires — the partial moratorium on settlement building.

What this means on this side of the pond is a lining up, a posturing, a getting ready to blame one side or the other for the talks’ collapse.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the sides seem, well, a little more sanguine.

For the Palestinians, arguing that a failure by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to extend the moratorium could kill the peace talks, we have the New York Times leader writer, as well as Roger Cohen.

Here’s the Artful Dodger, waxing Tarantinoish:

The progress is fragile, as recent clashes have shown. That’s why Obama must now break some bones to get his way: “Bibi, read my lips. It makes sense to extend that moratorium by a few months. For Israel and for the United States.”

Gevalt. The only thing lacking in this scenario is a horse’s head (although Rog, making his case this belligerently, seems to be auditioning for a key role in the Mad Magazine version of that scene from the Godfather.)

For Israel, its friends in Congress are lining up to make it clear that if the Palestinians even threaten to walk, why, it’s all their fault, as it always has been. This posture has been advanced subtly by Sen. Barabra Boxer (D-Calif.) in a letter to Obama now circulating among her colleagues:

Neither side should make threats to leave just as the sides are getting started.

Reps. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) are less shy today about who they blame for making threats:

The United States must make it clear to President Abbas that the stakes are too high to be held up by petty ploys such as walkouts and threats. 

Except, umm, Abbas made exactly this point clear in a meeting with Jewish leaders three days before Engel and Berkley put out their release. Here he is:

When asked about the likelihood of Prime Minister Netanyahu not extending the settlement construction moratorium, Abbas said, “I cannot say I will leave the negotiations, but it’s very difficult for me to resume talks if Prime Minister Netanyahu declares that he will continue his activity in the West Bank and Jerusalem.”

He’s not leaving the talks, but please, he asks Bibi: Don’t make an issue of the end of the moratorium.

It doesn’t look as if Bibi will make an issue of it. Dan Meridor, a vice-premier, tells Rog:

The end of the freeze is a test case for the concept of compromise. Neither side will get all it wants.

Rog says Meridor is "missing the point" and condescends to Abbas, saying he’s "playing nice."

But what if playing nice is the point? In fact, isn’t it the point of negotiations? So why are partisans here — Rog, Eliot, Shelly — doing the schoolyard taunt thing? Do they want to preempt a compromise?

One more thing: This "preconditions" business is a nonsense, used by both sides depending on which side believes it has the leverage. ("Take my knife away from your jugular? Why, that’s a precondition!") Israel. of course, has plenty of preconditions going ahead in these talks — the premier precondition being the non-participation of Hamas.

Now, yes, Israel has very good reasons for not wanting Hamas at the table — but that’s the point. The issue should not be preconditions themselves, but their quality. By allowing one side or the other to pretend that preconditions are the sine qua non of good faith, we (we journalists/observers/pundits) take a lazy path out — it keeps us from real analysis.

In this case, the Palestinians are concerned that continued settlement expansion would erode their claim to what’s left of the 22 percent of British Mandate Palestine they claim. Interestingly, Israel and the pro-Israel community kind of make this point by distinguishing between "good" settlements that will stay in Israel and "bad" settlements that will go. This formula has been enshrined in the Bush administration’s 2004 letter to the Sharon government. So, historically, there is a case to be made that letting settlements expand for so long effectively costs the Palestinians land. Yes, there is the concept of land swaps — but, although it has been the subject of talks since 2000, it has not been enshrined in a letter from the leader of the free world, so the Palestinians could be excused some raw nails.

The Netanyahu government has a strong response, though: Keep these talks going three, four, five months, and we’ll have a permanent deal, and, finally, the basis for Palestinian statehood. Nothing’s going to expand so much in that time to upend that cart. Why screw with Bibi’s political capital now when by springtime you’re gonna get the whole shebang?

The question that raises is: Are they that close? Can they close a deal in less than a year? Or is the greater likelihood the talks/violence cycle will drag on another 20 years? In that case, the Palestinian argument gains weight.