Abbas: Only hope for peace was with Olmert, but he was imprisoned and no deal was reached

Official PA TV, speech by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas at an Arab League conference in Cairo on April 21, 2019

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas: "From 1993 to this day we have not gone through any stage during which we could have felt there was hope [for a peace agreement], other than the stage of [former Israeli Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert with whom we held actual negotiations and actual discussions, but we did not achieve a result. The reason for this is that during the negotiations we came to meet with him and discovered that he had been taken to prison, and the discussion between us was not completed."