For this he was attacked by Netanyahu as the incarnation of all evil, the partner of Hamas, which is the equivalent of ISIS, which is the heir of Adolf Hitler, whose latter-day reincarnation is Iran.
I HAVE KNOWN Mahmoud Abbas for 32 years. He was not present at my first meeting with Yasser Arafat in besieged Beirut, but when I met Arafat in Tunis, in January 1983, he was there. As chief of the Israel desk of the PLO headquarters, he was present at all my meetings with Arafat in Tunis. Since the return of the PLO to Palestine, I have seen Abbas several times.
He was born in 1935 in Safed, where my late wife Rachel also grew up. They used to ruminate about their childhood there, trying to work out if Abbas was ever treated by Rachel's father, a pediatrician.
There was a striking difference between the personalities of Arafat and Abbas. Arafat was flamboyant, extrovert and outgoing, Abbas is withdrawn and introvert. Arafat made decisions with lightning speed, Abbas is deliberate and cautious. Arafat was warm in human relations, fond of gestures, always preferring the human touch (literally). Abbas is cool and impersonal. Arafat inspired love, Abbas inspires respect.
But politically there is almost no difference. Arafat was not as extreme as he seemed, Abbas is not as moderate as he looks. Their terms for peace are identical. They are the minimum terms any Palestinian leader -- indeed any Arab leader -- could possibly agree to.
There can be months of negotiations about the details -- the exact location of the borders, the exchanges of territories, the symbolic number of refugees allowed to return, security arrangements, the release of the prisoners, water and such.
But the basic Palestinian demands are unshakable. Take them or leave them.
Netanyahu says: leave them.
IF YOU leave them, what remains?
The status quo, of course. The classic Zionist attitude: There is no Palestinian people. There will be no Palestinian state. God, whether He exists or not, promised us the whole country (including Jordan).
But in today's world, one cannot say such things openly. One must find a verbal gimmick to evade the issue.
At the end of the recent Gaza war, Netanyahu promised a "new political horizon." Critics were quick to point out that the horizon is something that recedes as you approach it. Never mind.
So what is the new horizon? Netanyahu and his advisors racked their brains and came up with the "regional solution."
The "regional solution" is a new fashion, which started to spread a few months ago. One of its proponents is Dedi Zuker, one of the founders of Peace Now and a former Meretz member of the Knesset. As he explained it in Haaretz: The Israeli-Palestinian peace effort is dead. We must turn to a different strategy: the "regional solution." Instead of dealing with the Palestinians, we must negotiate with the entire Arab world and make peace with its leaders.
Good morning. Dedi. When my friends and I put forward the Two-State Solution in early 1949, we advocated the immediate setting up of a Palestinian state coupled with the creation of a Semitic Union, to include Israel, Palestine and all Arab states, and perhaps Turkey and Iran, too. We have repeated this endlessly. When the (then) Saudi Crown Prince produced the Arab Peace Initiative, we called for its immediate acceptance.
There is no contradiction at all between an Israeli-Palestinian solution and an Israeli-pan-Arab solution. They are one and the same. The Arab League will not make peace without the consent of the Palestinian leadership, and no Palestinian leadership will make peace without the backing of the Arab League. (I pointed this out in an article in Haaretz on the day of Netanyahu's speech.)
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