Outgoing Israeli PM Shakes Up Peace Conversation

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While Israel celebrates its 60th year as a nation and on the occasion of the Jewish new year, Mr. Olmert has broken with longstanding Israeli defense doctrine and called for radical new thinking. Over the last year, Mr. Olmert has come under fire and from Israeli opposition parties and has publicly castigated himself for his earlier right-wing views. He did so again in an interview with the newspaper Yediot Aharonot

Olmert, the former mayor of Jerusalem, said that maintaining sovereignty over an undivided Jerusalem, Israel’s official policy, would involve bringing 270,000 Palestinians inside Israel’s security barrier. He maintains that would mean a continuing risk of terrorist attacks against civilians by Jerusalem Palestinian residents that have increased this year. Olmert stated:

“I am the first who wanted to enforce Israeli sovereignty on the entire city. I admit it. I am not trying to justify retroactively what I did for 35 years. For a large portion of these years, I was unwilling to look at reality in all its depth.”

Olmert stated that traditional Israeli defense strategists had learned nothing from past experiences and that they seemed stuck in the considerations of the 1948 war of independence. During the Passover holiday earlier this year, Olmert made statements that some questioned on the Israeli relationship with Syria.

"(I am saying) what no previous Israeli leader has ever said: we should withdraw from almost all of the territories, including in East Jerusalem and in the Golan Heights,"

The government’s public stand on Jerusalem until now has been to assert that the status of the city was not under discussion. But Mr. Olmert made clear that the eastern, predominantly Arab, sector had to be yielded “with special solutions” for the holy sites.

On peace with the Palestinians:

“We face the need to decide but are not willing to tell ourselves, yes, this is what we have to do. We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice we will withdraw from almost all the territories, if not all the territories. We will leave a percentage of these territories in our hands, but will have to give the Palestinians a similar percentage, because without that there will be no peace.”

A senior Palestinian official, Yasser Abed Rabbo told Palestinian Radio that it would have been better if Mr. Olmert had taken this position while in office rather than while leaving it and that Mr. Olmert had not yet presented a detailed plan for a border between Israel and a Palestinian state.

Olmert who recently resigned in order to fight corruption charges, also said that any occupied land it held onto would have to be exchanged for the same quantity of Israeli territory. Mr. Olmert, in essence will continue peace negotiations while awaiting the new government. However, analysts generally agree that having been forced to resign his post, it is unlikely that he will be able to broker a deal.

His words are almost certain to stir up controversy as his expected successor, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, tries to build a new coalition government.