Jerusalem: Eight months into its difficult negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel has drawn up a detailed proposal for a peace agreement in principle, offering to withdraw from 93 percent of the West Bank, an Israeli newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The proposal includes arrangements on three bottleneck issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: borders, the Palestinian refugee problem and security, the authoritative Ha'aretz daily said, quoting a "senior Israeli official".
Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert presented the proposal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and was awaiting a reply, Ha'aretz said.
According to the report in Ha'aretz, Olmert offered the Palestinians land in the southern Israeli Negev desert, adjacent to the Gaza Strip, compensating for 5.5 percent of the 7 percent of the West Bank that Israel wants to annex. This would allow Israel to keep its major Jewish settlement blocs. In addition, the Palestinians would get a free passage, which would link the Gaza Strip with the West Bank, but nominally remain under Israeli sovereignty.
According to Ha'aretz, the offer stipulates that Palestinian refugees may return to their future state in the West Bank and Gaza only. The daily added the Palestinians were given preliminary maps of the proposed borders of their state, which it said run close to Israel's security barrier.
That means Israel would have to uproot some 70 of its 120 formal settlements in the West Bank. The vast majority of the almost 440 000 Jewish settlers living in the West Bank would be able to remain in the blocs located to the west of the barrier and around Jerusalem.
But Israel would nevertheless have to evacuate almost 60 000 Jewish settlers living to the barrier's east.
But the evacuation, the transfer of Israeli land to the Palestinians and the opening of the West Bank-Gaza free passage would only be implemented after the Abbas administration regained control of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. - Sapa-AP