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Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (file)
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| By Israel Insider staff July 25, 2007 |
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In what he is calling an "Agreement of Principles," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is offering to hold talks with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on the general terms for a Palestinian State. The two sides will first discuss less controversial issues, according to the Agreement, postponing the more sensitive subjects, among them borders, Jerusalem, and the refugees.
Olmert is also aware that he will enjoy support of the majority of the Israeli public, in what may be a bid to regain political favor after his popularity ratings plummeted to three percent following the Second Lebanon War.
Olmert is offering to start out with several basic principles, which are highly controversial among the right-wing. He is supporting a Palestinian state on 90% of the Territories, with a territorial exchange to compensate for the large settlement blocs that will remain under Israeli control in the West Bank. According to the Agreement, the West Bank would be connected to the Gaza Strip through a tunnel, offering the Palestinians territorial contiguity while maintaining security.
Israel would request territorial compensation for the tunnel in its sovereign territory, which it views as a better solution than the elevated or sunken highway proposals.
Additionally, the Agreement states that the Palestinians could declare Jerusalem their capital, which will surely cause uproar among centrists and conservatives. Olmert has suggested his support in the past for the withdrawal from the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem that surround the city. The Old City, its environs and the Mount of Olives, however, would remain in Israel's control.
However many people are concerned that the PA does not have the necessary authority to curb terrorist activity within the terroritories against Israel. Fears largely stem from Hamas' violent takeover of the Gaza Strip and its continuous firing of rockets into surrounding Israeli towns following the 2005 disengagement.
Olmert's plan is in line with his platform before the 2006 elections, when he suggested a unilateral evacuation from the West Bank, stopping at the security fence, in an attempt to retain a Jewish majority in Israel, behind a defensible border.
The "Agreement of Principles" is Olmert's alternative to the plan he rejected by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, termed the "shelf agreement." Rice's proposal require a complete final status agreement, negotiated by the U.S., whose implementation would be postponed.
The prime minister expressed concern that the PA will not be able to put the agreement into effect.
Olmert is also worried that such a plan would be used as the de facto basis to any future agreement regardless of the facts on the ground, as with the proposals of Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000, and the Clinton Plan.
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