Ehud Olmert’s attempt at reaching a final status agreement with the Palestinian Authority was questionable to begin with. Olmert, Israel’s outgoing Prime Minister, added to the anxiety of opposition observers by making outrageous statements, such as, “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses… the State of Israel is finished.”

But today, in what might be his last cabinet meeting, Olmert ended up exactly like his predecessor’s predecessor, Ehud Barak. Barak aimed as high as Olmert at the 2000 Camp David summit, and departed rightly blaming the Palestinian leadership, headed by Yassir Arafat, for failure. Olmert doesn’t have Arafat to blame, but he still manages to lay fault squarly where it belongs:

“I said it in the past and I do not hesitate to repeat it: The State of Israel will have to make dramatic and very painful concessions in order to achieve peace, but the fact that we have not yet achieved it is first and foremost a result of the weakness, lack of will and lack of courage of Palestinian leaders to reach an agreement,” Olmert said. “Everything else is just an attempt to deflect attention from the main issue.”

While this statement does not fully compensate for Olmert’s political sins, it deserves some praise. If PA leaders – or other world leaders – were expecting the outgoing PM to join the chorus crying over Netanyahu’s prospective policies, they were mistaken. Whatever Netanyahu does in the future, at least he will have his predecessor’s words to back him on the centrality of Palestinian stubborness.