The issues that separate Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) is always fodder for news, but the question that is less often asked is how much overlap is between them?
If the vast range of opinion within the Israeli body politic were to be taken into account, the question would become meaningless.  Within Israel, strands of political opinion are so vast they can be compared to being well to the right of Ghengis Khan and well to the left of anything Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has yet articulated. Therefore, the only practical approach is to assume that Israel’s position is that of its current democratically elected government led by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. If opinion polls have any validity, this seems likely to remain the situation after the forthcoming general election.
The position of the PA must be taken as that publicly stated by Abbas to the non-Arab audiences. There is no denying that like his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, he has made directly contradictory statements for domestic consumption, and the gap between his two positions is wide indeed − so wide that  he would face a problem in carrying Palestinian public opinion with him in any substantive peace negotiations.  Nor is there much point in referring back to the founding charter of Fatah, Abbas’s party, where the ultimate objective is clearly the elimination of Israel.  History has its place in the overall scheme of things, but politics is a game for the here and now.
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