Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has drawn ire for meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Paris, Friday.
According to a report by Palestinian news outlet Shasha News, Olmert called Abbas "a great political leader and the most relevant person for the future developments in the relations between Israel and Palestinians."
A senior Likud official blasted the former prime minister, saying, "Olmert, who offered Abu Mazen [Abbas] the Western Wall, has become his loyal spokesman. In the United States and many Arab countries, they have come to understand that Abu Mazen is the true obstacle to peace and that the significance of the demands he makes is not peace but the elimination of the State of Israel."
Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis, also a member of Likud, accused Olmert of living "in the previous decade."
"After Abu Mazen [Abbas] humiliated him [Olmert] when he did not respond to his miserable offer to establish a Palestinian state with [east] Jerusalem as its capital and [an Israeli] withdrawal to the 1967 borders, Olmert is now spreading lies against the elected Israeli government.
"The one refusing to restart negotiations is Abu Mazen, who ran from talks in 2011 and has not restarted them since," Akunis said. "It is amusing that Olmert still believes in the two-state solution that has already been taken off the table, including in Washington."
On Twitter, Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan said it was "sad to see a former prime minister serving the interests of the Palestinians against [those of] the State of Israel and the American administration and doing damage to Israel in the international arena.
"Now that [U.S.] President Trump and his representatives have come to understand that Abu Mazen is an inciter who rejects peace and promotes boycott initiatives against Israel, Olmert, disconnected from the truth and reality, goes and stands alongside the inciter Abu Mazen," Erdan wrote.
In a letter to Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and President Reuven Rivlin, Meir Indor, who chairs the Almagor Terror Victims Association, called for Olmert to stand trial for his "act of betrayal" of "standing alongside Abu Mazen and the PA, who fund terrorists and their families and incite to terrorism."
Indor said that at the very least, Olmert, who served 16 months out of a 27-month sentence for fraud and bribery, should be sent back to prison.
"It now turns out that his early release from prison, on the grounds that he was ill, was a misrepresentation," Indor said. "The president, who pardoned him from the [parole] restrictions imposed on him, must rescind the decision that allowed him to travel abroad and waived the requirement that he show up at the police station twice a week as a released prisoner."
Deputy Minister for Public Diplomacy at the Prime Minister's Office Michael Oren, of the Kulanu party, said Olmert's controversial actions were comparable to those of former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who has garnered criticism for meeting with Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif without the approval of the U.S. administration.
Citing the Logan Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from meeting with foreign leaders without the approval of diplomatic officials, Oren called Olmert's conduct vis-a-vis "Holocaust denier" Abbas "a blatant violation of democracy" on Twitter. He said the State of Israel needed its own version of the Logan Act.
Speaking to reporters following a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, Friday, Abbas said Ramallah was ready for talks with Israel.
"Now we say that we are ready for any confidential or public talks, the mediator will be the international Quartet plus other countries. We welcome any European or Arab countries," Abbas said.
U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton said earlier this month that the Palestinian de facto embassy in Washington was being shut because the PLO hadn't taken steps toward negotiations.
Abbas said, "We have stated our stances related to the negotiations that we have not rejected, not once. Usually, the Israelis say the Palestinians refuse the talks. I challenge them to show us, once we were invited to confidential or public [talks] in any country and [to show] we reject it. The rejection was always from [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu."
Abbas told reporters that he expected Macron to pass on the Palestinian stance to U.S. President Donald Trump when they meet on the sidelines of the United Nations General assembly in New York later this month.
A senior Palestinian official accompanying Abbas on his Paris trip told Israel Hayom that the PA leader had angered the French when he declined Macron's offer to present a peace plan that would see Paris replace Washington as mediator of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Abbas also said, "The Europeans are working seriously to substitute and fill the American [funding] gap" after the Trump administration canceled over $200 million in aid for Palestinian projects.
The U.S. made the decision to cut funding comes in response to Ramallah's announcement it would boycott U.S.-led peace efforts following Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move the embassy there, reversing decades of U.S. policy.
