Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met with former premier Ehud Olmert Tuesday and committed to restarting peace talks where they left off with the former Israeli leader over a decade ago, while rejecting a current US-backed peace effort.
The New York meeting and press conference by the two drew vociferous condemnation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who accused them of trying to undermine the US peace plan.
Rejecting the Trump plan in a joint press conference held on the sidelines of a UN Security Council meeting, Abbas called for a resumption of the talks he had held with Olmert when the latter was Israel’s prime minister 12 years earlier.
The two had “made real progress,” Abbas insisted, saying he was “fully ready to resume negotiations where we left it with you, Mr. Olmert, under the umbrella of the international Quartet, and not on the basis of the plan of annexation and legalizing settlements and destroying the two-state solution.”
Abbas “is a man of peace. He is opposed to terror. And therefore he is the only partner that we can deal with,” Olmert, who was seated beside the Palestinian leader, told reporters.
“I think that there is a partner,” Olmert reiterated, calling Abbas “the only partner in the Palestinian community that represents the Palestinian people, and that has manifested that he is prepared to negotiate.
Talks between Olmert and Abbas broke down in 2008 amid legal trouble for the Israeli leader and an Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip. Olmert has said that he proposed in 2008 relinquishing almost the entire West Bank to Abbas, with one-for-one land swaps, dividing Jerusalem to enable a Palestinian capital and conceding Israeli sovereignty in the Holy Basin to an international trusteeship.
Abbas did not responded to the offer.
Netanyahu succeeded Olmert as prime minister in 2009 and last met Abbas for direct negotiations in 2010.
Olmert’s participation in the press briefing was also condemned on Tuesday by Israel’s envoy to the world body Danny Danon, who lashed the former premier for “helping the Palestinians’ diplomatic terrorism. This is harmful not only to Israel, but also to the United States, which presented an important plan for peace in the Middle East.”
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