The limits of Abbas

Saul Singer of the Jerusalem Post asks whether, if Mahmoud Abbas becomes the elected Palestinian leader, this would mean that there finally are serious prospects for peace. His answer: not likely. Only a leader who proclaims “that Palestinians have no right to move to Israel because Israel will never be part of Palestine” will be able to make the peace. Abbas almost certainly is not that leader. The best we can hope for right now, says Singer, is “someone like Mikhail Gorbachev: the reformer who destroyed an evil system and ideology while trying to save it.” It’s not clear that Abbas would rise to that level either.