Abbas threatens to quit; will anyone believe him?

So the reports are probably true: Abbas was talking on the phone with Barack Obama, and he threatened to resign.

But will he? More to the point: Will anyone believe him?

Abbas says he's frustrated because he has no negotiating partner in Benjamin Netanyahu. But he's surely known that for months. It has certainly been clear since the three-way meeting in September with Obama and Netanyahu, for which Abbas was widely pilloried in the Arab world.

In other words, nothing has changed that would directly prompt Abbas to quit. So this is pretty clearly a political gambit. Abbas hopes the resignation threat will boost his standing at home, which has been tarnished by the settlement issue, and by the furor over the Goldstone Report delay. He hopes the threat will make him look like a principled leader, willing to sacrifice his political career for Palestinian statehood. (I suspect many Palestinians will see through this rather transparent move.)

Remember, Abbas has tried this stunt before: He resigned as prime minister in 2003 over Israel's unwillingness to implement the first phase of the "road map."

Abbas isn't just playing to a domestic audience, though. I'm sure there's an ultimatum here for the Netanyahu government: Either negotiate with me today, or negotiate with whoever wins the election -- and hope that he's more accommodating than I am.

If Abbas drops out of the race, it's likely that the next Palestinian president will take a harder line with Israel. Netanyahu might decide it's in his best interests to make some concessions to keep Abbas in office.

(That's if Netanyahu believes Abbas' threat, of course.)