These words were written before the voting by the Kadima party membership for a new leader to replace Ehud Olmert. Olmert, as the whole world knows, finally surrendered the prime ministership of Israel because of the complete and abject collapse of the public’s trust in him as a holder of the office due to the myriad allegations and investigations of corruption.
It is a foolish enterprise to try to predict the future. But it is not very likely that history will view favourably his tenure as prime minister. The Winograd Committee condemnation of his government’s handling of the Second Lebanon War will be the chief entry next to his name in the logbook of memory.
The quality of persistence, however, will be a bold-font asterisk beside the entry. For even on the eve of the Kadima party elections, he was negotiating the contours of a peace agreement with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
But whereas vanity may have led Olmert to deny the moral irregularity of continuing to make decisions on behalf of a people who refused any longer to follow him, it is the abiding guile of Abbas’ wilful deceit that propels him to make outrageous statements such as the one he made to Ha’aretz last week on the 15th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords.
“The gap between the sides is very large,” Abbas told Ha’aretz. “We presented our ideas and demands regarding the six issues [Jerusalem, borders, refugees, security, settlements and water] and have yet to receive any answer from the Israeli side.”
“Did you think that 15 years after Oslo we would still be sitting here and talking about the chances for a peace agreement?” Ha’aretz asked Abbas.
“It’s unbelievable,” Abbas answered. “It’s beyond any imagination that we haven’t succeeded in reaching an agreement until now.”
How is it possible to read those words without rolling one’s eyes in utter disdain of the man who spoke them?
Are we all to forget that it was Abbas’ boss and mentor, Yasser Arafat, who signed the accords without any intention of ever honouring them? Are we simply to shrug off as an unfortunate circumstance of the beginning of the decade, the intifadah of terror and suicide bombings let loose by Arafat against the people of Israel? And what of the weaponry on the Karine A that Arafat ordered, bought and signed for but was prevented from receiving? And so on and so on.
If this is beyond Abbas’ imagination, then he must stretch it to include the realm of honesty and truth. He might then find the Israeli side – and especially the Israeli people – more willing to trust their fate once again to the promises of a Palestinian leader.
