Details of Olmert's peace offer to Palestinians exposed
In
interview with Jerusalem Post Group Hebrew magazine, Olmert says he
blames Livni and Barak for breakdown of negotiations with Palestinians;
magazine obtains map sketched by Abbas with offered Israeli territorial
concessions.
Shortly after the dramatic meeting between
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and then-prime minister
Ehud Olmert at the latter's Jerusalem residence on Tuesday September 16,
2008, the Palestinian entourage returned to Ramallah. Despite the
relatively late hour, Abbas’s advisors and the heads of Fatah arrived at
his office; they understood the importance of the moment.
Less
than an hour earlier, Olmert presented the details of his offer for a
peace deal between the nations, an unprecedented Israeli offer to be
tendered to a Palestinian leader.
Olmert essentially agreed to
forgo sovereignty of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest
site, and proposed that in the framework of a peace agreement, the area
containing the religious sites in Jerusalem would be managed by a
special committee consisting of representatives from five nations:
Saudia Arabia, Jordan, Palestine, the United States and Israel. The
advisors and Fatah officials heard from Abbas that Olmert laid out for
him not only the details of the agreement but also a large map upon
which he outlined the borders of the future Palestinian state.
Abbas
silenced those present at the late hour meeting so that he could
concentrate. He asked for the map that Olmert described to be drawn from
what he remembered because Olmert refused to give him a copy. The
Israeli prime minister told him that he would not give Abbas the map
until the Palestinian leader was willing to ink his initials on it, or
in other words, agree to the borders that Israel offered.
The
Palestinian leader took a piece of the Presidential Office stationery
and sketched the borders of the Palestinian state from memory.
Abbas
marked the settlement blocs that Israel was asking to keep: the Ariel
bloc, the Jerusalem-Ma'aleh Adumin bloc (including E1) and Gush Etzion,
all together consisting of 6.3% of the West Bank. On the other hand, the
Palestinian president also sketched the areas that Israel offered in
exchange for the settlement blocs: around Afula-Tirat Tzvi, the Lachish
region, an area near Har Adar, and areas in the Judean desert and the
Gaza envelope. These areas consist of 5.8% of Israeli territory.
Abbas
wrote on the left hand side of the sketched map, what turned out to be
the incorrect figures that he remembered, 5.5% and 6.8% representing the
amount of land to be swapped. On the other side of the piece of paper
he wrote the other details of the offer: a secure corridor between the
Gaza Strip and the West Bank by way of a tunnel, the five nation
committee to oversee the holy sites of Jerusalem, Israeli evacuation
from the Jordan valley and the absorption of around 5,000 Palestinian
refugees into Israel, 1000 every year for five years.
Sof Hashavua magazine,
published by The Jerusalem Post Group, obtained a copy of Abbas's
sketch during an investigation into the secret negotiations between
Olmert and Abbas and published it for the first time on Friday. The two
leaders met thirty six times mainly in Jerusalem and once in Jericho and
reached a draft agreement that would clearly constitute the basis for
any future peace deal between the parties. But in the end no peace deal
was signed between Israel and the Palestinians despite Olmert’s
far-reaching offer. Until today, the Palestinian Authority has not
responded either positively or negatively to Olmert’s offer.
Saeb
Erekat, head of the Fatah negotiating team, was present at the meeting
in Abbas’s office that night and he was also present at the end of the
Jerusalem meeting between Olmert and Abbas. He was joined by Olmert’s
diplomatic advisor Shalom Turgeman. Olmert and Abbas asked Erekat and
Turgeman to meet the next day with map experts in order to reach a final
version of the border between Palestine and Israel.
But the
next day, the Israeli side claims, Erekat phoned Turgeman and asked to
postpone their meeting by 24 hours. A few hours after this call Erekat
called back and said that Abbas had to go to Amman. Erekat explained
that Abbas would update the Jordanians and the Egyptians about Olmert’s
offer in order to receive their support and the parties would meet again
the following week. “From that time, I am still waiting for Abbas’s
telephone call” Ehud Olmert told Sof Hashavua.
When
asked why Abbas did not return to the negotiating table with him,
Olmert says that the Palestinians took into account that former US
president George W. Bush was at the end of his term and they were
hoping for a more favorable leader in Washington and they also believed
that Olmert himself was finished politically.
But Olmert also
lays the blame for the breakdown in negotiations at the feet of then
foreign minister Tzipi Livni and then defense minister Ehud Barak.
Olmert cites former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s book No
Higher Honor in which she says that Livni came to her and Abbas
separately asking them that they not “enshrine” Olmert’s peace proposal.
Olmert also said to Sof Hashavua that Barak sent representatives to Abbas to tell the Palestinian leader not to accept his proposal.
A senior Palestinian official told Sof Hashavua that Abbas thought Olmert’s proposals for Jerusalem and the right of return were unacceptable.
“There
were internal Palestinian talks about the offer”, the official said,
adding “These are weighty issues. The natural thing for Abbas to do
would be not to sign immediately and to act responsibly and return to
consult with the Fatah leadership.”
“Over the last few years
Abbas has said he was willing to renew the talks from the point at which
they ended with Olmert,” the official added.
Erekat confirmed
the details of Olmert’s proposal but said that Olmert’s memory with
regard to the meeting with Abbas was “short.”
“We also presented
a map to Olmert that would transfer 1.9% of West Bank territory to
Israeli sovereignty. On December 18, 2008 we deposited our map and
Olmert’s map as we remembered it with President Bush at the White House
in the presence of Rice and [National Security Advisor Stephen] Hadley.
Bush asked that we and Israel send representatives on January 3, 2009 to
Washington, but then the operation [Cast Lead] began in Gaza.”
When
Erekat was asked about the three months between the meeting with Olmert
in September and the Gaza operation in January, he said that there were
many intervening meetings between the Palestinians and Turgeman, Livni,
and Tal Becker from the Israeli side.
In response to Olmert's comments, Barak’s office told Sof Hashavua that the claims against Barak in the article are baseless and seemingly reflect the claimant’s pathetic state.
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni’s office also denied Olmert's statements.
The original full version of this article appeared in Hebrew in Sof Hashavua magazine, published by The Jerusalem Post Group.
Translated by Nathan Wise.
No comments:
Post a Comment