One Friday evening last November, Mahmoud Abbas made a rare appearance on the popular Israeli TV station, Channel 2. In his boxy suit and tie, the Palestinian president looked every bit his 77 years, his olive skin tinged with gray, his voice soft and whispery. He shifted in his seat with every answer. But when the interviewer, Udi Segal, asked him about his vision for the future of his people, Abbas offered a reminder of why this man was once, and perhaps remains, the great hope of the two-state solution.

“Palestine for me is ’67 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital,” he said. “This is now and forever.” Abbas had been born in the town of Safed, which his family fled during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948 and which is now a part of Israel. Segal asked, did he wish to visit? Abbas raised his eyebrows. “I want to see Safed,” he replied quietly. “It’s my right to see it, but not to live there.”

Every Israeli viewer would have immediately grasped the significance of that statement. For years, one of the top obstacles to a peace deal has been the “right of return”—the Palestinian demand that some five million refugees and descendants be allowed to go back to their former homes. In Israel, whose population of eight million already includes 1.5 million Arab citizens, the phrase signals nothing less than the demographic destruction of the Jewish state. Among Palestinians, the right of return is sacrosanct. And yet, here was Abbas waving away the idea altogether. With Israeli elections only a couple of months away, it seemed that the Palestinian president had just eliminated one of the longest-standing impediments to a peace deal.

In Israel, left-of-center politicians like former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Shimon Peres praised Abbas’s remarks. But in the West Bank and Gaza, the interview caused mayhem. Hamas leaders called Abbas a traitor; some in his own Fatah Party attacked his judgment. In Gaza, Hamas supporters burned photos of the president and marched with banners that read, “Pioneer of concessions: it’s time to quit.” By Sunday, Abbas had walked back the refugee comment, saying he was only speaking for himself. Right-wing Israelis pounced, calling Abbas two-faced, and within days, the election returned to its fixation with the onerous cost of living.

The Abbas interview could be seen as confirmation that, with the right ascendant in Israeli politics and Hamas firmly entrenched in Gaza, peace is a very remote prospect. But looked at another way, his remarks were a sign that the peace process lingers in a phase that is not altogether hopeless.