Abbas: Peace deal was close under Olmert

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were close to reaching a peace deal in the last round of formal negotiations, President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday.

Abbas claimed that the two sides were nearing a breakthrough in talks that were broken off last year when Israel launched its war on the Gaza Strip. The present Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said, is simply uninterested he peace, he said.

"We sat and negotiated with the Israelis over drawing borders and we negotiated these borders with [former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert and [former Foreign Minister Tzipi] Livni," Abbas was quoted as saying.

According to the Palestinian Authority’s WAFA news agency, Abbas told a gathering of business figures at his compound in Ramallah, “We must continue to have faith in peace, security and we must believe in the development of our country and our national unity.”

“We accepted international legitimacy and we accepted the international law and we accepted the roadmap and we offered all commitments and we honored all the commitments that came in the roadmap and achieved a lot in terms of security and economic stability,” Abbas told his audience.

“But the other side has not done anything, they have not stopped settlements and they refuse to recognize the two states and they have not accepted the international terms of reference that were ratified by the entire world and despite all of this, they say they reject preconditions,” he said.

“We have not applied preconditions on anyone. … it seems that they [Israelis] do not want peace and they refuse to stop settlements and they don’t want the two state solution, so I really don’t know what do they want. This is our position and we will not give up our position and we will not give up our constants and the other side has to think about what they want to do if they really want peace.”

He continued, by addressing the currently stalled US peace initiative. “Obama at the beginning said that the most important issue is to freeze the settlements but then the settlement freeze is not a condition anymore.”