Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, 2009. Photo: wiki commons.

JPost – Former prime minister Ehud Olmert insisted on Monday night that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was a partner for peace despite years of negotiations between the two men that failed to clinch a deal.

“No one can say to me after hundreds of hours of discussing peace with Abu Mazen that he is not a partner because he doesn’t want peace,” Olmert said at the J Street annual conference’s gala dinner, using Abbas’s nickname. “He wants peace with Israel and he accepts the existence of Israel as Israel declares itself to be. I don’t need Abu Mazen to make declarations about the nature of the State of Israel.”

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