Abbas and Olmert meet in Jordan, agree to hold a formal summit later

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had a breakfast meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the ancient Jordanian city of Petra yesterday morning.

Along with the pita and hummus, the two agreed to hold a formal summit in either Jordan or Egypt in about two weeks.


The meeting was the first between Abbas and Olmert since the Israeli elections.

Jordan's King Abdullah, who met separately with the two leaders wouldn't go public with what he said to Abbas, but was more than willing to tell the press that he used his time with Olmert to urge Israel to agree to a revival of peace negotiations under the so-called 'road map.'

Agreeing to accept this plan as gospel, drawn up with the participation of the Arabs and an Arab-American senator but without the participation of a single Israeli was one of Sharon's biggest errors as Israel's leader.

Abbas has always called for a revival of peace talks, but Olmert had the audacity to made this conditional on the Hamas-led Palestinian government renouncing violence, accepting Israel's right to exist and endorsing past interim agreements which call for a two-state solution. Apparently, Olmert has even given up those modest conditions.

Can't have the Palestinians agree to keep any prior agreements or stop their violence against Israel now, can we? Bad for diplomacy.

Olmert also grovelled and apologized for civilian deaths resulting from Israeli airstrikes against terrorists hidden in their midst. Abbas, of course, did not apologize for the rocket attacks or the ongoing terrorism strikes against Israel.

Of course, in Olmert's case, he has the additional problem of needing to make the right noises in order to keep peace in his home. Both his wife and daughter are activists on the far, far Left of Israeli politics, something that's very well known in Israel.

(Just as a side note, even the Geneva Convention recognizes the right of a nation engaged in hostilities to attack `resistance fighters and guerillas' hidden in the midst of a civilian population and recognizes that there will be collateral damage in those attacks.)

So here we have the amazing spectacle of a man with no clue and no vision negotiating under fire with another man who's government doesn't even recognize it's adversary's right to exist or any prior agreements..and expecting to come up with something meaningful.

Good luck with that.

Olmert's big threat, of course, and the basis on which he and Kadima were elected was his wonderful `disengagement' plan, wherein he would determine Israel's final borders unilaterally by 2010, uprooting thousands of Jews from their homes, property and livelyhood and giving the Palestinians a free gift of 90% of Judea and Samaria(the West Bank) so they have an easier time reaching Jerusalem and Tel Aviv with the qassams and katushkyas.

This brilliant plan has basically gone down the drain.

Olmert's big idea has met with nothing but cold water when he tried to peddle it internationally. The Bush Administration refused to support it when Olmert was in Washington last month, and just yesterday, Egypt and Jordan are against the idea, the EU leaders wouldn't back it, Tony Blair not unexpectedly turned his back on it (Blair need to keep the peace at home too!) and just yesterday the US-European summit in Vienna came out against any Israeli unilateral steps on the West Bank and pimped for negotiations and the road map as the only way forward.

Not only that, but Olmert's plan got another kick in the crotch when radical leftwing MK Yossi Bailin, leader of Meretz, stated that the Olmert plan had no chance of majority support in the Knesset because both his faction and the Arab bloc would vote against it as not giving the Palestinians enough!

The truth of the matter is, there's no real basis for negotiations with the Palestinians. For that matter, there's no basis for a 2nd Arab Palestinian state. Outside of a hatred for Jews and a shared feeling of victimization, there's nothing holding the people known as `Palestinians' together, and no viable economic, geographic or cultural reason for such a state to exist. The world would have for gotten about them a long time ago if they were in, say, Central Africa instead of fighting the Jews.

Israelis partially recognized that when they elected Olmert on the premise that he would forego dealing with them and simply come up with a unilateral solution, but they clung to the fantasy that they could do that without militarily defeating Fatah and Hamas and driving them away from Israel's borders.

That war is coming, and the sooner the Israelis understand that and begin to win it, the better for Israel.