Occupied Jerusalem: For more than a year, the Palestinians insisted on an Israeli colony freeze as a precondition to entering direct talks with Israel. But recently they dropped their demand, paving the way for the first direct peace talks with the Israelis since early 2009.

Or did they?

While Palestinian leaders say they'll show up for the talks, they also insist they'll withdraw if Israel doesn't extend a colony expansion moratorium that expires on September 26. Since no one expects substantial progress in a 60-year-old conflict to be made in a little under a month, and restarting talks only to have them break down immediately would probably do more harm than good, it's reasonable to wonder what's going on here.

It appears that the Palestinians have made a tactical switch to shift the claims of being the "obstructionist" party from themselves to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The burden will now be on Netanyahu to extend the freeze in order to keep talks that US President Barack Obama has staked considerable prestige on inching forward.

But the Israeli prime minister is in a bind because he promised right wing allies that he would renew building, so a formal declaration of a new or extended freeze seems unlikely. That does not mean, however, that a surge of new colony construction is coming at the end of September. Palestinian and Israeli analysts say that Israel could informally pressure settler groups to restrain new construction, or perhaps use the permitting process to do so, in effect meeting the Palestinians half-way.

"It's not about colonies, it's about what type of good will the sides are [bringing] to the talks,'' says Mohammed Dajani, a political science professor at Al Quds University. "It's about what is your goal in entering negotiations: is it to achieve peace, to stall, to please international powers, or win public relations points?''

While Palestinian officials like lead negotiator Saeb Erekat insist that all new construction is unacceptable, some degree of construction is likely to be tolerated. After all, the Israeli group Peace Now said there were 481 housing starts in the West Bank over the first eight months of the "freeze," though that was far fewer than the 3,500 new units that settler groups say they were adding before the freeze.

That was enough for the Palestinians to agree to indirect negotiations. Netanyahu's moderate supporters have suggested that Israel seek a compromise under which it would be allowed to continue building in larger "blocs" of colonies adjacent to Israel proper, while the building moratorium would remain in force in communities deep in the West Bank.