Haniyeh & Olmert: Perfect Peace Partners

Who knew? Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the ousted prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, and outgoing (not in the extrovert sense) Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert look ready to strike a perfect peace deal.

In separate reports, both Haniyeh and Olmert said they are ready for a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders. Imagine that? Well, sign the paper then. Of course, everyone in the Israeli government is scrambling to distance themselves from Olmert since that would be the most fanatical concession of any Israeli administration.

But this is a major concession for Haniyeh as well. According to Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass, Haniyeh said the "Hamas government had previously made it clear that it was willing to accept a Palestinian state that followed the 1967 borders and to offer Israel a long-term hudna, or truce, if Israel recognized the Palestinians' national rights."

Of course this falls short of recognizing Israel as a state, but it is still scaled back from "pushing Israel into the sea."

Olmert, for his part, used the auspicious occasion of a memorial day for assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to make this astonishing statement: "If we are determined to preserve the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel, we must inevitably relinquish, with great pain, parts of our homeland, of which we dreamt and for which we yearned and prayed for generations, and we must relinquish Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem, and return to that territory which comprised the State of Israel until 1967. ... We must return to our familiar places, in the Galilee and the Negev, build them and realize the tremendous potential embodied in the unbounded energies of our people; we must reignite the flame of ingenuity and creation, and nurture a new kind of Zionism – realistic, sober, responsible and bold."

Kadima leader and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, running for prime minister in February's elections, said she is "not committed to the outgoing prime minister's comments."

Surely all this talk only helps Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu who has positioned himself as the right-wing alternative and the only other viable candidate at this point.