In a meeting with President Obama last March, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refused to accept a U.S.-brokered “framework” for the creation of a Palestinian state. Had Abbas signed on, the momentum toward statehood would have greatly accelerated, and Israel’s government would have been under enormous pressure to put forward reasonable terms.

Instead, having refused to respond to Obama, Abbas is now pushing yet another quixotic attempt to have the U.N. Security Council impose Palestinian terms for a settlement on Israel. On Monday, Arab diplomats said they were reluctantly going along with a Palestinian demand to introduce a resolution to the Security Council – though Arab opposition may force a postponement of the vote this week that Abbas wants.

The draft would set a one-year deadline for the conclusion of talks and mandate the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank by the end of 2017. Over the weekend, its language was toughened so that a reference to Jerusalem as the “shared capital” of the two states was changed so that Jersualem is mentioned only as the Palestinian capital.

Not only does this text have no chance of being approved, but the Palestinians’ support on the Security Council is weaker this week than it probably will be next month after a membership rotation. Yet Abbas appears ready to insist on failing.

Abbas could endorse the framework laboriously negotiated by Secretary of State John Kerry and challenge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – or his successor after Israel’s upcoming election – to resume negotiations. Statehood would then be on the table – but the Palestinian leader would have to commit himself formally to compromises he has until now discussed only in private with U.S. and Israeli leaders. Rather than lobby at the U.N., he’d have to try for the first time to sell those concessions to his own people.

Abbas has, on several previous occasions, dodged that challenge. So no one should be surprised if he now insists on losing another vote at the United Nations.