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Peace Process

Olmert offers DOP II - with 90 percent of the land


By Stan Goodenough
July 26, 2007

In 1993, Israel and the Palestinian Arabs - in the persons of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chief Yasser Arafat - signed a Declaration of Principles (DOP) which was popularly dubbed the Oslo Accords.

These principles mapped a route, supposedly to peace, but via the "easy" path of interim agreements which would create a foundation upon which thereafter to negotiate and settle the stickier final-status issues.

The outcome of these negotiations would be - voila! - an independent Palestinian state erected on today's Arab-occupied Jewish lands.

In fact, what the DOP led directly to was the bloodiest ten-year period in the history of reborn Israel.

Notwithstanding the painful legacy of Oslo, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced Wednesday that he would offer the "Palestinians" another DOP - another agreement of principles towards a Palestinian state.

The offer would include 90 percent of Samaria and Judea - Israel's biblical heartland and national cradle.

According to Ha'aretz, "Olmert's proposal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is based on his view that it is important to first discuss issues that are relatively easy for the two sides to agree upon.

"No less important is Olmert's assessment that such an accord will enjoy the overwhelming support of the Israeli public and the Knesset."

It was precisely these starting points that Rabin and then Foreign Minister Shimon Peres used to get Oslo underway.

If Olmert's proposal was accepted by the Palestinians, Ha'aretz wrote, the two sides will begin negotiations on "the characteristics of the Palestinian state, its official institutions, its economy, and the customs arrangement it will have with Israel."

After an Agreement of Principles, the sides would engage the more sensitive diplomatic issues, like final borders, Jerusalem, the refugees and so-called transit arrangements.

Ha'aretz - an extreme leftwing newspaper, claimed that Olmert knows the Israeli public overwhelmingly supports of a "two-state solution," and that the current makeup of the Knesset will give him the 82 votes he will need to ratify such an agreement.

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