Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an interview on Thursday that clinching a two-state solution with the Palestinians is essential for survival as he returned home from a US peace conference. “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then, as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished,” Olmert told the Haaretz newspaper. Palestinians living in the Isreali-occupied West Bank currently do not have a vote in Israeli elections. “The Jewish organisations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents,” Olmert was quoted as saying.
He brushed aside often-levelled domestic criticism that he had embarked on the revived peace efforts in order to draw attention away from several corruption investigations against him and boost his sagging ratings. People “will say I’m having problems and that’s why I’m trying to do (a peace process), but the facts must be dealt with justly.”
He reiterated that the final status negotiations with the Palestinians, which he and Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas officially relaunched on Wednesday, would not be easy. The talks “will be difficult, complex, and will require a very great deal of patience and sophistication.” He said Abbas was a valid partner for the Israeli side, despite his weakened position at home in the wake of the takeover of the Gaza Strip by the Islamist Hamas movement. “We now have a partner,” he said. “He is a weak partner, who is not capable, and (international Mideast envoy) Tony Blair says, has yet to formulate the tools and may not manage to do so. “But it is my job to do everything so that he receives the tools, and to reach an understanding on the guidelines for an agreement.”