When the president of Syria recently suggested negotiations over an agreement, the prime minister declared that the Golan Heights will remain in our hands forever. The Israel Defense Forces' assessment derives from the alternative that Syrian President Bashar Assad mentioned at the time should there be no discussions over an agreement. We seized on that word. We are good at clinging to threatening declarations from the other side. And all Israeli governments have excelled at such declarations of their own. Even Rabin knew how to open a threatening mouth. But when it seemed to him that circumstances enabled and even necessitated negotiations, he went for it.

Since then, the right has racked up considerable success in denigrating the Oslo agreements. This is perhaps the major political achievement of a camp that would reject any possibility of an agreement, even - and especially - if the Syrians and Palestinians offered it on their knees. The Oslo process occurred in a past that looks very distant. Nevertheless, it is still perceived by both the brainwashers and the brainwashed as a kind of superior proof of Israel's need to live by the sword. This is one of the most dangerous, and therefore the ugliest, of the national lies that are circulating here.

The governments of Yitzhak Shamir, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon did not intend even for a moment, and Ehud Olmert's government does not intend now, to talk with the Palestinians. The case of prime minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000 remains controversial and has given birth to superficial rightist slogans. Because of his desire to return to the leadership in a more assertive guise, Barak has contributed considerably to the national brainwashing with his "there is no one to talk to." Since then, no attempt has been made to reach out to any Palestinian administration, even after one leader died in a besieged bunker and a more moderate figure succeeded him.

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Even though it exerted its full military force in Lebanon and the territories, Israel currently finds itself in one of its gloomiest periods. It has tried everything, apart from one thing. During six years of far-reaching changes in the region, which have operated mostly to its detriment, leaders have come and gone without making even the slightest effort to consider dialogue. Dialogue? From Netanyahu to Olmert, in the course of war on terror, everything possible has been done to disrupt the life of the population of the territories, its ability to earn a living and its use of its infrastructure. When the head of the Hamas government suggested a prolonged hudna (truce), Jerusalem scorned the initiative as though it were not its obligation to look into the option of an interim agreement that might stop the bloodshed.

Olmert should stop telling us stories. He is not prepared to take down Jewish settlements in the West Bank or to come down from the Golan Heights. He has enough problems without sticking his head into the maw of obdurate right-wing parties. Therefore, he has brought in Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman. Therefore, he will not seriously examine, through American and Western mediation, what could be done to advance Israel's interests as long as it is contrary to his personal political needs.

This national scandal must stop. This is not about a suspicion of corruption here or there. It is about a full-scale abandonment of the country's welfare. The Olmert government has an offer from Damascus? It should respect it and look into it. There are cracks in the Palestinians' positions? Olmert should act to widen them via a fair offer, with daring and an open mind, and through enlisting Western governments instead of concentrating on inciting them against the elected Palestinian government.

On the most important national issue, he has no case, because he has not scrutinized the possibility of dealing with it properly. He is having trouble figuring out how to do so? Then let him turn in the keys. But this does not even occur to the prime minister.

Thus Ehud Olmert is forcing us to level a grave accusation at him: He is betraying the office with which he has been entrusted, in a way that endangers the country's fate. Nothing less.