Aides to Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas scorned as “completely false” claims made by outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to the Cabinet on Sunday that the PA is too weak to sign an agreement for a new Arab state.
“We were ready to sign a peace agreement,” the Prime Minister declared, but added that Israel and the PA have not reached an agreement because of the PA’s “weakness, lack of will and lack of courage in reaching an agreement. Everything else is excuses and attempts to divert attention from the main issue.”
Nabil Abu Rudeina, an aide to Abbas, retorted, “Israel did not present a single map. The proposals did not include conditions for the creation of an independent Palestinian state on all Palestinian territory occupied in 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital,"
Prime Minister Olmert told the Cabinet Sunday morning, "The fact that we have failed to reach a peace agreement so far is only because of the Palestinian leadership's weakness and lack of courage to reach an agreement."
In what could be his last meeting with the Cabinet, he added that Israel will have to make “dramatic and painful concessions.” He claimed that his government’s “long, interesting and greater strides’ were greater than those made by any administration since former Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s offer of almost all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza at the Camp David Summit in 2000.
Yasser Arafat, who was Abbas’s predecessor, rejected the offer and shortly afterwards launched the Oslo War, also known as the Second Intifada, which escalated to suicide bombings and rocket attacks.