Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party slammed former premier Ehud Olmert as a “loyal spokesman” for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas after the two met in Paris over the weekend. Referring to the Palestinian boss as “the true obstacle to peace,” a Likud statement denounced the meet, following which Olmert described the immense respect he has for Abbas who in his view is “a great political leader…[and] the only person among the Palestinian people who is capable” of forging peace. Olmert also claimed that had his term not been cut short by criminal convictions against him—offenses for which he served 17 months in prison—he would have reached a peace agreement with the PA. In this respect, the former Israeli leader in 2008 offered Abbas to create a Palestinian state in virtually the entire West Bank (with minimal land swaps) and the Gaza Strip with east Jerusalem as its capital. For his part, Abbas never responded to the proposal. Olmert’s statements drew the ire of the Israeli right, given that Abbas has rejected out-of-hand United States President Donald Trump’s yet-unveiled peace proposal and is refusing to engage in any American-led process to jump-start negotiations. Relations between Ramallah and Washington have reached a nadir, with the Trump administration suspending hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinians after Abbas imposed a boycott on American officials in the wake of Washington’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Nevertheless, the U.S. president has offered to meet with Abbas this week in New York, an overture that has thus far been rejected.
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