Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is under no obligation to honor any of the
commitments that former prime minister Ehud Olmert made to the Palestinians,
Netanyahu’s associates said on Saturday night, reiterating statements Netanyahu
made throughout his campaign for the premiership a year and a half
ago.
Olmert wrote an opinion piece for Friday’s
Jerusalem Post in which
he called on Netanyahu to offer the Palestinians what he did, which he first
revealed to the public in a June 2009 interview with Newsweek’s Kevin
Peraino.
RELATED:'Top US figures raised idea of taking 100,000 refugees'Erekat: Israel has agreed to honor Olmert concessions“Olmert told me he met with Palestinian [Authority] President
Mahmoud Abbas in September 2008 and unfurled a map of Israel and the Palestinian
territories,” Peraino wrote. “He says he offered Abbas 93.5 to 93.7 percent of
the Palestinian territories, along with a land swap of 5.8% 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.”
In a Tel Aviv speech sponsored by the Geneva Initiative last
Sunday, Olmert revealed that the “very, very limited number of refugees” Israel
was willing to accept was 20,000. He also claimed that the United States had
offered to accept 100,000.
When top Bush administration officials denied
that an offer of such a large number could have been made, sources close to
Olmert hinted that it came from either George W. Bush himself or his secretary
of state, Condoleezza Rice. Olmert did not reveal who made the offer in the
article.
“Olmert said all along that the terms of his negotiations were
that there would be no deal on anything until there was a deal on everything, so
not only would Netanyahu not have to accept anything Olmert offered, but even
Olmert wouldn’t,” a Netanyahu associate said.
“What Olmert told the
Post
has no impact on us.”
MKs close to Netanyahu went further and
specifically ruled out Netanyahu accepting a single Palestinian refugee or
giving the Palestinians or any foreign entity control over Jerusalem’s Holy Basin, singling out the Temple
Mount and Western Wall.
When asked whether they thought they could make
peace without paying the price that Olmert was willing to pay, Netanyahu’s
confidants would only say that this was what the current negotiations were
intended to determine.
“There is no situation in which Netanyahu or any
Likud leader could offer the Palestinians what Olmert offered, especially
regarding Jerusalem,” said Likud faction chairman Ze’ev Elkin, who is close to
Netanyahu. “I don’t think any Likud MK would vote for it, and the public would
be overwhelmingly against it as well.”
Likud hawk MK Danny Danon said the
problem was not with Netanyahu but with the president of the United States,
Barack Obama.
“I don’t believe Netanyahu would have considered Olmert’s
conditions but there is no doubt that Obama sees them as obligatory,” Danon
said. “They don’t understand that we had an election that changed the reality in
Israel.”
Meanwhile, Labor officials denied a report in Friday’s Yediot
Aharonot that quoted an international businessman who tried to mediate a deal
for Barak to join Kadima following 2006’s Second Lebanon War, when he was out of
the Knesset.
The report said that Barak offered to break up the Labor
faction and take a third of it with him in return for the Defense
portfolio.
“Olmert is once again rewriting history and distorting reality
in order to distract the public from the envelopes of bribes he received,” a
Labor spokesman said. “The initiatives and strange ideas portrayed in the
newspaper have come from Olmert’s wild imagination.
“Any offers made to
Barak were politely declined.”