Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s announcement Wednesday that he no longer considers himself bound by the Oslo Accords shows that he has “effectively given up” on a negotiated peace deal with Israel, The New York Times stated in a staff editorial.

It is hard to gauge what President Abbas’s declaration before the United Nations General Assembly amounts to. He did not specify what tangible actions might follow his rejection of Oslo, and it would be foolhardy for him to cut the existing security, economic and civil cooperation with Israel, or to incite the Palestinians to more violence, especially at a time of high tensions over holy places in Jerusalem. On the Israeli side, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a brief statement that dismissed Mr. Abbas’s speech as “deceitful” without any notice of his main announcement.

There is no question that Mr. Abbas is an acutely bitter man. At 80, he has effectively given up on ever achieving a negotiated Palestinian state; he is increasingly unpopular among the Palestinians, and the Palestinian Authority he leads effectively controls only the West Bank since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. His chief preoccupation lately has been on a series of gestures, largely futile, to gain international recognition of a Palestinian state, like the official raising of the Palestinian flag at the United Nations on Wednesday.

The Oslo Accords, which were signed in 1993, spelled out the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians based on a formula of land for peace. They have been the basis of peace negotiations since then. Abbas’ predecessor, Yasser Arafat, committed in the accords to “renounc[ing] the use of terrorism” and “peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two sides … through negotiations.” Though Israel has ceded land to the PA, Palestinians groups have continued to engage in terror against Israel, and Abbas has on multiple occasions expressed his intention to abandon the format of bilateral negotiations altogether.

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