Evidently the number one obstacle in Israel to any sort of peace deal with Abbas isn't the opposition Likud or the rump-Sharonist party of Ehud Olmert but the new leader of the Labor Party, also Defense Minister, Ehud Barak. Helena Cobban recently had this to say about Barak, and I think it's worth quoting at length:

In the west, Ehud Barak is generally widely thought of as a relative "peacenik" among Israeli political leaders. In 1999, when he was head of the Labor Party, he was indeed elected PM on a strongly pro-peace platform. ("I will complete the negotiations with the Palestinians within 6-9 months," etc.) He failed miserably. In fact, he was hustled at the speed of light out of being the IDF's chief of staff into being head of Labor, and never had time to learn anything at all about politics or diplomacy along the way. Hence, the coalition that he headed in Israel fell apart in almost record time, because of his total lack of political skills. The "peace process" fell apart disastrously, too, bringing us in short order Sharon's disastrous September 2000 visit to Al-Aqsa Mosque, the outbreak of the Second Intifada, and Sharon's amazing triumphant re-entry into national leadership just 17 years after the Kahan Commission had said he should be banned from high office for life.

Along the way, Barak did make what could be described as two "drive-by, quickie" attempts at peacemaking. One with Hafez al-Asad, which failed miserably because of Barak's arrogance and duplicity (and Bill Clinton's complicity with both those aspects of Barak's behavior.) That failure almost certainly helped kill Hafez al-Asad. After that one failed, Barak turned those same attributes in Yasser Arafat's direction, forcing him to the completely ill-prepared Camp David 2 summit from which both Barak and Clinton emerged vociferously and in a quite one-sided way blaming Arafat.

My best friends in the Israeli peace movement heap a lot of blame on Barak for killing the Israeli peace movement at that point. By successfully spreading the (significantly inaccurate) story that he had made Arafat a "generous offer" and that Arafat had turned it down out of hand, Barak spread the idea very broadly in Israel and the US that the Israelis had "no partner for peace" on the Palestinian side.

Israel's Labour Party has always been a flawed vehicle for any hopes of concluding a just and sustainable peace. One problem with the party since its inception has been the extremely incestuous relationship between its leadership and that of the Israeli military. Some of the IDF's retired generals have become voices of good sense regarding the need for peacemaking; but many more of them have not. People like Ephraim Sneh, Binyamin ("Fouad") Ben-Eliezer, and Ehud Barak have taken into the party's upper echelons the mindset of bulldozers and bullies. They are also very much aware of the huge interests many of their friends and former colleagues have in the success of Israel's massive military-industrial complex.

A lot more could be said about Barak. I think his low point was after all but throwing the 2001 election to Sharon, he asked Sharon to return the favor and make him Defense Minister. Now he's finally made it, under Sharon's successor. He probably thinks of that as some form of vindication. More likely Olmert's just trying to figure out how to blow off the shotgun deal that Rice is trying to rope Olmert and Abbas into. He may figure that if anyone can sabotage a deal it is Barak. After all, Barak not only opposed Oslo from the start; he took a fall as the most incompetent Israeli Prime Minister ever just to kill Oslo in the end.