Apparently in between President Obama’s confusing and contradictory speeches over the past week, he introduced a plan for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. In case you didn’t catch it, State Department Spokesperson Mark Toner carefully explains:

But there’s—I mean, we clearly have a plan. It was laid out by the President that we want to see negotiations move forward. We don’t want to see the Palestinians seek action at the UN. We don’t believe that that’s a constructive path. We want to see both parties return to the negotiating table, where they can address these issues and reach a framework agreement.

You can’t just call for negotiations and say that’s a plan. A plan would address the fact that there is no Middle East envoy, there is no credible partner for Israel to negotiate with, and that there is barely any consistency in the administration’s positions. To claim that the plan is for Israel to “return to the negotiating table” is absurd. Obama has acknowledged that Hamas is a problem, but now he needs to talk about how to address this problem before negotiations are even possible.

Up until now, the president has been acting as if the unity deal between Hamas and Fatah doesn’t exist. But he can’t ignore the fact that they are hurrying down the path to a unity government, and that Hamas has refused to recognize the state of Israel as recently as yesterday. If Obama were serious about restarting negotiations, then he would put his energy into discouraging this unity agreement. By continuing to stick to his untenable “plan” and neglecting to outline the consequences of Fatah’s action, the president is only encouraging Abbas to continue down the same path.