Footage also showed a smiling Abbas shaking hands with Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu, and speaking with Zionist Union MK Tzipi Livni.
High-placed Fatah officials defended Abbas’s move, saying that it would send a message to the world that the Palestinian people were serious about peace. They did not mention if Israel had committed to any reciprocal steps. Netanyahu had not acknowledged Abbas’s presence in his remarks at the funeral.
The backlash against the visit expresses the despair many ordinary Palestinians feel with the status quo. More than twenty years after the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the settlement enterprise continue apace, while Palestinian statehood seems more distant than ever. That frustration is often directed at Abbas, who is sometimes seen as an obstacle to change. His decision to attend Peres’s funeral seems unlikely to alter that perception.
Philip Sweigart is programme director at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He holds an M.A. in International Affairs from American University’s School of International Service, and received a B.A. in Foreign Affairs and Middle East Studies from the University of Virginia, where he wrote his thesis on the role of ethno-sectarian identity and class differences in the 2011 Arab uprisings.
* As the NY Times explains, the word optics has been adopted in American political circles to mean image, how something will look.