The most exciting images to come out over the weekend were of the Paris meeting between former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
When a troublemaking dictator takes a blow, there will always be those who rush to comfort them in their time of distress. Case in point: former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's pathetic yet traitorous meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif. In their meeting, Kerry recommended the Iranians hold out until the Trump administration, which pulled out of the nuclear deal and has taken a number of measures against Iran, leaves the White House.
In the United States, as in Israel, there are laws against sabotaging official foreign policy. One should not, however, expect these laws to be enforced.
Olmert wants to make the viewers at home long for the peace he was about to achieve with Abbas. Never mind that nearly all of the transcripts of the talks held between then-Foreign Minister and fellow Kadima party member Tzipi Livni's meetings with former PA official Ahmed Qurei and chief negotiator Saeb Erakat indicate otherwise.
Despite all of the shocking concessions he proposed, Olmert never even came close to peace. Olmert's actions this time around have served to prop up a local despot who sends delegations to North Korea, does everything he can to ensure the situation in the Gaza Strip continues to deteriorate and whose interests align with those of Iran.
Like late Foreign Minister-turned President Shimon Peres before him, Olmert is trying to compete in that well-known Olympic field of who can issue the most praise for late PLO leader Yasser Arafat or Abbas and call them "true men of peace" and hint or even say outright that, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it is Israel is guilty of recalcitrance.
Olmert's meeting with Abbas over the weekend follows a series of meetings that kicked off a few weeks ago at the initiative of Peace Now. The last such meeting was held between a group of former Israeli ministers and Abbas in Ramallah, and took place the very same day a stabbing attack was carried out at a shopping center near the Gush Etzion Junction.
After the meeting in Ramallah, renowned "man of peace" Yossi Beilin spoke of how Abbas very nearly condemned, very nearly denounced the attack at the meeting. In fact, Abbas recommended the attacker's dispatchers send their own sons to murder Israelis, instead of the sons of others.
The meeting with Abbas is but a continuation of the bizarre peace initiative Olmert floated at the end of his tenure. The principle aim of the talks with the Palestinians at that time was to distract the Winograd Commission, tasked with investigating the failures of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, and the political echelon, increasingly focused on reports of his corruption, and shield him from criticism.
