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Israel News from Jerusalem Newswire
Peace Process

Olmert's offer


By Stan Goodenough
July 26, 2007

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hopes to appease the Palestinian Arabs with an offer that is expected to include the following aspects:

  • The creation of Palestine - a Muslim Arab state - on about 90 percent of Samaria and Judea and in the Gaza Strip. This is more or less what then Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat in 2000.

  • An exchange of territory to allow Israel to retain its large settlement blocs in the "West Bank."

  • The digging of a tunnel that will connect Samaria and Judea to the Gaza Strip so as to ensure territorial contiguity.

  • Enabling the "Palestinians" to declare Jerusalem their capital by Israel withdrawing from parts of so-called East Jerusalem, areas historically never considered part of the historical city.

  • Israel will retains control of Jerusalem's Old City, its environs and the Mount of Olives

[Ed note - This last provision is guaranteed to scupper the entire agreement, as it did at Camp David in 2000, when Arafat refused to agree to any Jewish sovereignty in the Old City even if it confined itself to territory under the Temple Mount – Israel’s holiest site.

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