tel aviv | Israel’s former prime minister gave his most detailed description yet of his 2008 peace offer to the Palestinians, saying in a Sept. 19 lecture that if the current talks are to succeed, the agreement would have to resemble the plan the Palestinians turned down two years ago.
Among Ehud Olmert’s revelations, he said his plan called for Israel to recognize Palestinian refugees who lost their homes in the fighting around Israel’s creation by agreeing to repatriate a small number — less than 20,000 — for humanitarian reasons. The Bush administration, he added, had agreed to take in 100,000 more as U.S. citizens in the framework of a peace deal.
Olmert also said he proposed a Palestinian state on more than 90 percent of the West Bank, with land swaps to make up for any land Israel annexed. In past interviews, he has said the Palestinians were offered close to 94 percent of the territory.
The West Bank and Gaza were to be linked through Israeli territory, and the Palestinians were to have a capital in the Arab neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem. Jerusalem’s coveted Old City, with its holy sites, one of the most intractable issues dividing the sides, was to be governed jointly by Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United States, he said.
The Palestinians deemed Olmert’s offer insufficient at the time, but wanted the more hawkish premier who replaced him, Benjamin Netanyahu, to use it as a starting point for negotiations. Instead, Netanyahu has taken it off the table.
Olmert said his offer could still be a blueprint for a peace accord. “We are really on the brink on this point, at least to the extent that I know the opinions of the Palestinian leadership,” Olmert said in what was for him a rare political speech.
If Netanyahu’s government succeeds in reaching an agreement with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Olmert told the audience at a Geneva Initiative conference, “You’ve heard its main details this evening.”
The circumstances of the failure of Olmert’s peace talks with the Palestinians remain in dispute.
Olmert said he made his offer on Sept. 13, 2008, including detailed maps showing the Palestinian state, a land link between Gaza and the West Bank, and precise arrangements in Jerusalem, including roads, tunnels and bridges to enable the sharing of the city.
In May 2009, Abbas told the Washington Post that he couldn’t accept Olmert’s offer because “the gaps were wide.”
Olmert said Sept. 19, “There is no choice but to say that this agreement was not achieved when that was possible because the Palestinian side was not prepared to make the extra step that I believe we made.”
After the speech, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat confirmed the details of Olmert’s offer. He said the Palestinians made a counter-offer, depositing their own map with the President George W. Bush three months later. He would not give details.
He said talks were ongoing when Israel invaded Gaza at the end of 2008. The invasion, launched to stop rocket fire by Gaza militants, halted the negotiations, and Olmert’s party lost power not long afterward.
Olmert announced his resignation under a cloud of corruption charges in late 2008, and Israeli voters — disillusioned about the chances of peace with the Palestinians — replaced his centrist government with a hard-line coalition.
President Barack Obama has said he hopes to reach a deal within a year.