WHAT OLMERT OFFERED PALESTINIANS IN PEACE PROCESS

GENESIS 12:1-3
1 Now the LORD had said unto Abram,(CHANGED TO ABRAHAM LATER) Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:(PALESTINE,ISRAEL)
2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

Senate Unanimously Backs Pro-Israel Resolution

Senate unanimously backs a resolution which stipulates that the U.S. will assist Israel in an attack against Iran.

By Elad Benari-First Publish: 5/23/2013, 4:43 AM-Israelnationalnews

U.S. Senator Robert Menendez-Reuters

The United States Senate unanimously backed on Wednesday a pro-Israel resolution calling for U.S. assistance for Israel, should it be forced to attack Iran in self-defense.

Senate Resolution 65, introduced by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, condemns Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capability.

The resolution supports Israel’s right to self-defense and reaffirms the close security cooperation between the United States and Israel.It states that the United States has a vital national interest in and unbreakable commitment to, ensuring the existence, survival, and security of the State of Israel; reaffirms the United States support for Israel’s right to self-defense; and urges that if Israel is compelled to take military action in self-defense, the United States will stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military, and economic support in its defense of its territory, people, and existence.It also states that U.S. policy is to halt Iranian nuclear ambitions “to take such action as may be necessary to implement this policy”.Resolution 65 was adopted last month by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.“Iran’s provocative actions threaten not just regional stability, but pose an existential threat to our ally Israel, and clearly are a very real threat to U.S. national security,” Menendez said in a statement after Wednesday’s vote. “Iran’s leaders must understand, that unless they change course their situation will only get worse. Their economic struggles and international isolation will only grow,” he added.“While this resolution makes absolutely clear that we are not authorizing the use of force, it does make clear that we have Israel’s back,” stressed Menendez. “If Israel is compelled to take military action in self-defense against Iran’s nuclear program, we should stand with Israel – using all the tools of our national power – to assist Israel in defense of its territory, people and existence.”

Kerry meets Israelis, Palestinians in bid to revive talks

By Arshad Mohammed | Reuters – 55 mins ago MAY 23,13

By Arshad Mohammed

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held separate talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials on Thursday and acknowledged there was considerable skepticism that the two sides would resume peace negotiations.There were no signs of any breakthrough as Kerry visited Israel for the fourth time in his four months in office to try to revive a peace process that has been moribund for more than two years.
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations broke down in late 2010 in a dispute over Israeli construction of Jewish settlements on occupied West Bank land that the Palestinians want for a state."I know this region well enough to know that there is skepticism. In some quarters there is cynicism and there are reasons for it. There have been bitter years of disappointment," Kerry said as he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posed for pictures."It is our hope that by being methodical, careful, patient, but detailed and tenacious, that we can lay out a path ahead that can conceivably surprise people but certainly exhaust the possibilities of peace."Kerry met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for lunch in the West Bank city of Ramallah and was to return to Jerusalem to see Shimon Peres, who holds Israel's largely ceremonial post of president, and have breakfast on Friday with Netanyahu.Before their meeting on Thursday morning, Netanyahu said he wanted to restart peace talks."It's something I hope the Palestinians want as well and we ought to be successful for a simple reason - when there's a will, we'll find a way," Netanyahu said.The two men discussed ways to advance peace, Kerry's ideas for an economic plan to boost Palestinian growth and the "escalating violence" in neighboring Syria's civil war, a senior U.S. State Department official told reporters after the meeting.
SETTLEMENTS

Last week, Kerry telephoned Netanyahu to voice U.S. concern at Israel's plan to declare legal four unauthorized West Bank settler outposts.Most of the world deems all Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal. Israel, which captured the land in the 1967 Middle East War, disputes this and distinguishes between about 120 government-authorized settlements and dozens of outposts built by settlers without official sanction.The main issues that would have to be resolved in a peace agreement include the borders between Israel and a Palestinian state, the future of Jewish settlements, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem.In his visits to the region, Kerry is also trying to put together an economic package for the Palestinians to go alongside the U.S. political initiative. European diplomats, in meetings with Palestinian leaders, have been trying to steer them away from any notion the European Union might present a peace plan of its own. British Foreign Secretary of William Hague was also due to hold talks with Netanyahu and Abbas later on Thursday.(Additional reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Sonya Hepinstall)

Hand-drawn map shows what Olmert offered for peace

Hastily drawn 2008 sketch by Abbas, made public for the first time, illustrates former prime minister’s dramatic territorial proposal for ‘Palestine’

By Stuart Winer May 23, 2013, 2:26 pm 9 thetimesofisrael

Then-prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Jerusalem, Novermber 2008. (photo credit: Moshe Milner GPO/Flash90)

A sketched map of Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert’s land-for-peace offer to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in 2008 — hurriedly drawn up by Abbas after a meeting with Olmert that December, and made public for the first time on Thursday — suggests that Israel was prepared to withdraw to borders very similar to the pre-1967 lines and swap areas of northern and southern Israel in return for maintaining the larger settlement blocs.The map, published by Walla news, was based on an offer Olmert made to Abbas on December 16, 2008, during a meeting in Jerusalem. Olmert presented Abbas with a large formal map showing his territorial compromise proposal for the contours of a Palestinian state as part of a permanent peace accord, and demanded that Abbas initial the proposal before taking it back to Ramallah for consideration by the Palestinians. Abbas refused to do so, but on his return to his headquarters, he gathered his officials and asked them to remain silent while he hastily recreated the offer on a sheet of official Palestinian Authority notepaper.The sketch, which includes no place names, indicates that Olmert was apparently willing to more or less return to the pre-1967 lines, while maintaining the Gush Etzion settlement bloc south of Jerusalem, the settlement city of Ma’ale Adumin to the east, and a slice of territory that apparently would encompass the large settlement of Ariel in Samaria. In exchange for expanding Israeli sovereignty to those areas, Israel would have given up some of its own land to the new Palestinian state.

According to Walla, Olmert envisaged relinquishing Israeli territory on a one-for-one basis to the Palestinians in areas including near Afula; near Tirat Zvi south of Beit She’an; north of Jerusalem; in the Judean Desert, and in the Lachish area. He also endorsed a tunnel route to link Gaza and the West Bank.Olmert, as he has subsequently confirmed, was also prepared to divide Jerusalem into Israeli- and Palestinian-controlled neighborhoods, and to relinquish Israeli sovereignty at the Temple Mount and the entire Old City. He proposed that the “Holy Basin” be overseen instead by a five-member, non-sovereign international trusteeship, comprising Israel, the PA, Jordan, the US and Saudi Arabia.

A sketch of the land for peace offer made by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in December 2008. The map was hand-drawn by Abbas. (photo credit: Walla News)

According to Walla, Olmert has confirmed that Abbas’s sketched map is similar to that depicted in his proposal, and reconfirmed his readiness to have relinquished sovereignty at the Temple Mount.

The map shows no Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley. Walla said Olmert confirmed he was ready to forgo an Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley — a key strategic area, control of which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defined as vital to Israel’s security. In return, Walla cited Olmert as saying, Israel expected full security cooperation with Jordan.In March, the New Republic reported that in September 2008 Abbas was close to signing an agreement that would have seen him give up on the so-called “right of return” for Palestinian refugees and their descendants beyond a symbolic number of several thousand.

Overall in recent years, Olmert has been widely reported to have proposed that Israel annex some 6.3 percent of the West Bank to encompass the key settlements, and compensate the Palestinians with a corresponding 5.8% of territory from within Israel, plus the corridor linking Gaza to the West Bank. The Palestinians have been reported to have countered with a proposal for a far smaller, 1.9% land swap. Abbas told the Washington Post in 2009 that Olmert’s offer was insufficient. “The gaps were wide,” he said.

Some analysts suggest Abbas backed out at the time in large part because he believed that Olmert, who had announced that he planned to resign in order to fight corruption allegations, did not have the political clout to see the deal through. Others see Abbas’s failure to seize the most far-reaching offer even made by an Israeli prime minister as proof that no offer that Israel might reasonably make would be accepted by the Palestinian leadership.Publication of the map Thursday drew a sharp response from Deputy Minister Ofir Akunis (Likud), a staunch Netanyahu loyalist who acts as a liaison between the government and the Knesset. Akunis said that what he called the PA’s rejection of the Olmert offer shows that the Palestinians are not really interested in peace.“It is further proof that the argument is not about Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] but on the very existence of Israel,” Akunis told Walla. “Even though Olmert sold out on everything, gave in, for nothing in return, the Palestinians didn’t accept the offer. Their continued refusal of even the most generous offer should present a warning sign to the whole world: The Palestinians are the obstacle to peace.”

Olmert has said that Abbas did not accept the offer but also did not specifically reject it. Rather, according to Olmert, Abbas failed to respond to it.