WASHINGTON — LAST week, before going to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, declared that he would drop a bombshell in his speech. The much-awaited line, delivered Wednesday, was this: “We cannot continue to be bound by these signed agreements,” by which he meant the Oslo Accords, “and Israel must assume fully all its responsibility as an occupying power.”

These sound like strong words, but what do they actually mean? Did Mr. Abbas mean that he intended to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, the entity set up by the Gaza-Jericho agreement of 1994? Did he mean that the Paris Economic Protocol, which provides for Israel to collect the taxes on imports to the Palestinian territories and provide them to the Authority, would now lapse? Did he mean that security cooperation between Palestinian and Israeli security forces would stop?

Don’t count on it. It is one thing to say “we will not be bound by these agreements,” and another thing actually to stop implementing them, particularly when the Palestinian Authority is by far the largest employer in the West Bank. With roughly 70 percent of the Authority’s budget coming from the taxes that the Israelis collect, there will be no rush to end the economic protocol. (Every time Israel withholds these funds, it creates a financial crisis in the territories.) And given that Mr. Abbas constantly emphasizes his opposition to violence, he is unlikely to end security cooperation.

Why, then, did he make this statement? Mr. Abbas knows that Palestinians are extremely frustrated. Despite the new flag flying outside the United Nations this week, there is no real movement toward statehood. The Israeli occupation seems unlikely to end, and Palestinians see no obvious path for pursuing their national aspirations.