Mahmoud Abbas cannot yet afford to lose the Israeli army presence in the West Bank as the threat of a Hamas takeover there still looms. Thus the peace talks are a pretense.
The US invasion of Iraq in April 2003 generated a new set of threats and challenges for the Arab states of the GCC, including the possibility of Sunni- and Shi'i- instigated terrorism spreading to the GCC states from Iraq, and, as in Iraq, the outbreak of sectarian fighting in these states.