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Thursday, January 11, 2007

Abbas lays out his "red lines." What are Olmert's?

For reasons I don't quite comprehend, the Palestinian Arabs are making the 37th anniversary of Fatah's being integrated with the PLO as a very big deal (or at least Fatah is.) During the celebrations (of the "revolution"), Mahmoud Abbas stressed his demands (autotranslated):
- Our priority to preserve the national unity and preventing and prohibiting internal fighting
-Want one authority and one speaks and struggling and negotiate on behalf of the people
-We do not accept and we will not accept unilateral exclusion and groupware
- The PLO is the political and legal umbrella of the National Authority
- We will not accept state with provisional borders
- We will not accept compromise on the issue of refugees
- We will not give up one inch of Jerusalem

Leaving aside for now that he is pretty much saying "we will remain stateless for decades or centuries if necessary, making our people miserable rather than even think of compromising for peace," can anyone even imagine what Olmert's "red lines" are?

A normal Israeli leader would be able to mimic some of Abbas' demands: no compromise on Jerusalem, no compromise on "refugees", no compromise on large settlement blocs. But what would the "leaders" of Israel today say are their red lines?

Sadly, I don't think there are any. People without conviction make poor leaders.