Abbas and Peres in dreamland

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed to continue a 16-month-old cease-fire with Israel - denying Hamas ever broke it, after meeting Saturday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Abbas said the militant group Hamas, which holds a majority in the Palestinian parliament, had not discarded the truce in the past week.

“Hamas did not break the truce, although some violations have happened, due to the killing of the family (on a Gaza beach on June 9),” he told reporters.

The Palestinian leader vowed to uphold the cease-fire “in order to have people living in peace”.

Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Saturday that Israel and the Palestinians were closer to peace than they’ve been in past 50 years.

“The distance between us is the shortest it’s been for the last 50 years,” Peres said at one-day security summit in the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan. “The distance is very short, but the speed is very slow.”

Two men whose careers are heavily invested in the illusion that they have actually made a difference towards peace during their tenures, steadfastly holding on to their fantasies. Hamas of course made it clear that they are not interested in a cease fire.

Meanwhile, Peres' fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate was proven to have ordered the kidnap and assassination of American diplomats in 1973 in newly released State Department documents. The power of wishful thinking is amazing indeed, and the ability of otherwise intelligent people to overlook the obvious in order to advance their agendas based on that same wishful thinking is even more amazing.