Newsweek: Olmert offered to create sovereignty vacuum in Jerusalem

Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: OK. So anyone with an attention span beyond 20 seconds and a willingness to think beyond the next moment can understand the incredibly dangerous tinderbox that the proposal to create a sovereignty vacuum in Jerusalem is.One that could plunge the region into bloody war after an equally bloody war of attrition.

But let's not forget.

This is Ehud Olmert.

Ehud Olmert as in Olmert-Sharon and the retreat from Gaza.

The half baked idea (let's not even call it a plan) that was born thanks to
a 20 second attention span and a 24 hour planning horizon.

Just this week Elliot Abrams reminded us as to just how fast and loose the
retreat was handled when he revealed in an op ed in the 25 June Wall Street
Journal that Washington exploited the failure of the Sharon team to secure
an understanding over the continued IDF presence on the critical Philadelphi
Corridor before Sharon publicly committed to the retreat. The Sharon team
knew damn well that Israel had to stay there in order to prevent weapons
smuggling - but it forfeited the Jewish State's security interests at
America's insistence.].
.
At the end of Olmert's term he tried one last maneuver in an effort to
secure a legacy. Olmert told me he met with Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas in September 2008 and unfurled a map of Israel and the Palestinian
territories. He says he offered Abbas 93.5 to 93.7 percent of the
Palestinian territories, along with a land swap of 5.8 percent and a
safe-passage corridor from Gaza to the West Bank that he says would make up
the rest. The Holy Basin of Jerusalem would be under no sovereignty at all
and administered by a consortium of Saudis, Jordanians, Israelis,
Palestinians and Americans. Regarding refugees, Olmert says he rejected the
right of return and instead offered, as a "humanitarian gesture," a small
number of returnees, although "smaller than the Palestinians wanted-a very,
very limited number."

Olmert's Lament

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is proof of the perils of reining in
settlements. He's also proof of why Washington should try.

Kevin Peraino
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Jun 22, 2009
www.newsweek.com/id/201937

As the sun rose over New York City on Thursday, June 4, Ehud Olmert, the
former prime minister of Israel, lay anesthetized on a Manhattan operating
table. A cancerous tumor on his prostate had recently grown in size. His
doctors had "all kinds of suspicions" about it, Olmert explained when we met
at his house outside Jerusalem shortly before the surgery. Olmert, 63,
looked terrible. He told me he hadn't been working out lately. He had put on
a paunch, his eyes had a glassy quality and he had a persistent cough. I
asked whether he was feeling any symptoms. "I sometimes feel tired," he
said. "But there are so many reasons for being tired." Olmert explained that
he had settled on a new, robotic-assisted surgery designed to avoid damaging
key nerves. An aide later said that the goal was to limit the risk that the
operation would harm Olmert's ability to "function as a man."

At the very same moment that doctors were removing Olmert's prostate, Barack
Obama was standing before a raucous crowd of Egyptians across the Atlantic
Ocean. Obama's speech at Cairo University was wide-ranging, but officials in
Israel zeroed in on the president's stern criticisms of Israeli settlements
in the Palestinian territories. Obama warned that ongoing construction
undermined the peace process-and, by implication, U.S. interests. "It is
time for these settlements to stop," he declared. After Israeli officials
protested that they had reached secret agreements with the Bush White House
allowing for some "natural growth" in existing settlements, Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton shot back that there was "no memorialization" of any
backroom deals, infuriating her Israeli counterparts.

Following the debate from his recovery bed, Olmert must have felt betrayed.
In recent years the former prime minister had tried to cast himself as a
reformed hawk, a onetime expansionist who had turned against the "Greater
Israel" settlement movement. One of Olmert's few political assets as prime
minister was the perception that he could effectively manage the critical
relationship with the United States. Now the Americans seemed to be
challenging his policies, too. In two lengthy interviews for this
story-Olmert's first since he left office in March-the former prime minister
was defiant and sometimes combative, but also seemed exhausted and slightly
desperate. "I'm not dead," he told me at one point, banging a finger on his
desk. He almost seemed to be trying to convince himself. "I'm not in power,
but my ideas are in power. And my ideas will prevail."

For full article click here