Having declared during his election campaign that there was no “Palestinian” peace partner and that unilateral withdrawal was Israel’s only option, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has now seemingly inexplicably shifted course and is seeking to restart negotiations with the PLO.

And this despite the fact PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is apparently on the verge of forging a unity government with those most dedicated to Israel’s demise - the ruling Hamas organization.

There are two possible explanations for this bizarre behavior:

1. Olmert has suffered considerable political damage following the recent Lebanon war, and would like to bring calm to Israel’s external borders before another round of fighting erupts.

   In line with this desire, he is bowing to Arab insistence that Israel will never have peace with its neighbors until it reaches an accord with the “Palestinians.”

2. With his coalition on the verge of collapse, Olmert is relying on the notion that Israelis will be reluctant to go to early elections in the midst of an active round of negotiations.

   Furthermore, he knows that those to the right of his Kadima Party oppose the surrender of Judea and Samaria, and that those to the left oppose unilateral actions in place of a negotiated settlement. Employing the strategy of his predecessors, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, Olmert believes he can enter into negotiations that will inevitably lead nowhere by virtue of “Palestinian” intransigence, thus satisfying the full spectrum of Israeli politics.

Considering that Olmert believes himself to be Sharon’s heir in every way, and that he has demonstrated that his own political survival is of paramount importance, option two seems most likely.

The danger, of course, is that Israel cannot enter into negotiations with the “Palestinians” without the world getting all starry-eyed about the prospect of “peace,” and putting immense pressure on Israel to accept more undesirable terms and offer additional concessions.

There can be no question that with Hamas in charge, the chances for even a pretend peace with the “Palestinians” at this point are next to nothing. And the prime minister knows this. But he is apparently willing to further gamble with the lives of his people for the sake of “four more years.”

It is unacceptable that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is now willing to use his “good offices” to help secure the release of two abducted Israeli soldiers, considering that they are only in captivity because Annan’s impotent UN forces failed to do their job by keeping the peace along Israel’s northern border.

UN forces have been on the ground in southern Lebanon for nearly 30 years. They were supposed to prevent acts of aggression like Hizb’allah’s July 12 assault and kidnapping, and the resulting devastation suffered by both Israel and Lebanon. But they have failed to do their job for a very long time now.

So Annan will forgive Israel and those of us who support her if his offer of assistance (if a negotiating a prisoner exchange with terrorists can be called “assistance) is viewed with contempt.

Tellingly, Lebanon last month complained that UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the fighting and mandated the removal of Hizb’allah as a fighting force, was also too little, too late. And they were absolutely right, though not in the way they meant it (Beirut had wanted the UN to force Israel to stop defending itself much earlier).

As stated above, the UN was supposed to prevent such conflicts from ever arising.

Come to think of it, can anyone recall even one conflict that the UN has managed to contain and resolve by deploying its silly blue-helmeted peacekeepers? Why in the world does any nation, let alone Israel, allow itself to believe UN intervention is the answer to its problems, the antedote to conflict?

Kofi Annan, sporting his pacifist/humanist goggles, declared from Tehran Sunday that the Iranian nuclear crisis could be easily solved in a diplomatic manner if the West would just show a little patience.

The lack of Western patience, not Iranian defiance, is the problem. Right. How in the world is sitting around twiddling our thumbs going to suddenly cause the Iranians to realize they don’t want nuclear weapons?

Doesn’t it seem odd to anyone that Iran is not actually making any demands in return for not enriching uranium? That’s because they don’t want anything. Anything but nuclear weapons, that is. All patience is going to do is give them an opportunity to build an A-bomb, rendering irrelevant any effort to prevent Ahmadinejad from ushering in the Islamic age of “justice,” diplomatic or otherwise.

As anti-terror operations in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip draw to a close, Israel is teaching its terrorist antagonists some lessons, but if recent media reports are to be believed, they are not the lessons most would have hoped for.

According to Israel’s largest newspaper (and Egyptian newspapers before that), Jerusalem is prepared to release up to 800 jailed terrorists in return for the freedom of IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit. This after weeks of clandestine negotiations, despite Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s public declarations that Israel would not negotiate with terrorists or succumb to blackmail.

Similarly, rumors are rife of a possible prisoner exchange with Hizb’allah.

Interestingly, both of these prisoner swaps, if indeed they are in the works, would take place after major Israeli military operations sparked by the abductions. Israel could have agreed to and conducted an exchange without going to war in Gaza and Lebanon.

It would seem to defeat justification of going to war (to create a future deterrent) if Israel anyway intends to give the terrorists what they wanted in the first place. And it certainly signals to both Hamas and Hizb’allah that future kidnappings will be worthwhile.

Israel is apparently operating under the misguided assumption that the terrorists will view future kidnappings as too costly because of the men they lost during this summer’s fighting. What Jerusalem for some reason fails to grasp, even after all this time, is that the numbers of men lost in the fighting or gained in the subsequent prisoner swaps are unimportant to the terrorists. What matters is the precedent, the damage to Israel’s morale, and the further deterioration of Israel’s image in the region as a power not to be tempted.

I know Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has put his “convergence” plan on the back burner for now, but that doesn’t mean he has forgotten about it or doesn’t plan to still implement it. After all, he and his colleagues insisted during the election campaign that Israel has no other hope but to surrender Arab-dominated Judea and Samaria.

But even if Olmert and his buddies were right in asserting that holding the cradle of Jewish civilization poses a demographic threat to the modern Jewish state (and they are not), the more immediate threat of having all Israel covered by short-range enemy rocket fire should raise some giant red flags.

Imagine all of northern Israel to the Jezreel Valley under attack from Hizb’allah’s 10,000 rockets, the populous central region taking fire from Samaria, Jerusalem being bombarded by Judea-based rocket cells, and Beersheva, Ashkelon and the south suffering a barrage of Gaza-launched missiles. After last month’s Lebanon war, that scenario must be viewed as realistic. And if it does happen, it will completely shut this nation down. No business, no commerce, no air travel, no tourism, etc. The desolation that existed in northern Israel from July 12 to August 14 of this summer would extend to every border of the Jewish state.

The demographic threat is a theory, an assumption. The rockets are a very real and proven threat.