"...Abbas told me that Iran gives Hamas $500 million a year ..."

Abbas as in Mahmoud and 'me' is WINEP's Makovsky:

"... Negotiators want to begin peace talks with the issues of security and borders, as each side knows well what the other side wants. Even differences over territory are unlikely to be insurmountable. The last time the parties tried to hold quiet talks, in 2008, they differed over just 4 percent of the West Bank. Abbas has said he knows that Israel will keep West Bank settlements adjacent to Israeli cities, and Israel is likely to provide the Palestinians an offsetting amount of land within the Israeli border.

There are two issues that are not about quiet policy shifts but will require conditioning of the populations: Jerusalem and refugees -- the narrative issues of the conflict that cut to the self-definition of the parties. The difficulties surrounding these issues have led some to question Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's call to complete the talks in one year. But the hope is that progress on security and borders will facilitate political traction on these thornier topics.

If, however, that does not happen, the parties need to find ways to grapple with these final issues in a manner that does not cause other progress to unravel.

Are there risks to talks? Of course. Abbas told me that Iran gives Hamas $500 million a year, and it is likely that Tehran will try to upend negotiations.

Yet inaction also poses risks. Fayyad's efforts at Palestinian institution-building and security cooperation are succeeding because they are packaged as part of the effort to build a state. A bottom-up push focused on security and economic institutions will not be sustainable unless it is joined by a top-down effort."