Halpern: Reading the map on the wall

I'm thinking

By Micah Halpern

Issue of Dec. 25, 2009 / 8 Tevet 5769

It’s called the Olmert Map. It is the map that then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proposed and offered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. It is the map that Abbas chose not to accept. Olmert was offering the Palestinians a very good deal.

This Olmert Map fully understands the new reality of life in the Middle East and peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The principle of the map is based on the ‘67 borders, just as the Palestinians have been calling for. In return for significant Jewish settlement areas, large swaths of land from within the 1967 border, land that abuts the border, would have been incorporated into Palestinian territory.

Most of the land that would now be Palestinian is in the south of the West Bank in the Judean Desert. Smaller areas abutted Gaza to the East running north south. There was also a very small swath just south of Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi that runs east west nearly up to the Jordan River that would have been part of the exchange.

Of course, there are a few modifications and built in security measures. For example, a safe passage route from the northeast corner of Gaza through Israel to Tarqumiya in the southwest corner of the West Bank would be controlled by Israel. It would either run underground or be covered over so that potential terrorists could not simply stop their cars, get out and perpetrate attacks against Israel.

Incorporated into Israel, as part of the Olmert Map, was Jerusalem. Also included, some would say naturally included, are every major settlement in the Jerusalem area including Ma’aleh Adumim, Ariel and Gush Etzion. Even settlements that had not really been considered “inside” in earlier discussions, like Kedumim, Karnei Shomron, Elkana and Alfei Menashe, were on the Olmert Map.

Olmert just recently made the map public and Abbas has confirmed that, indeed, this was the document. Abbas has also said that he and Olmert were almost at the point of final agreement when Israel began the Gaza offensive and then everything was called off.

Questions abound. The most burning question for me is this:  Why did Abbas wait so long? He could have taken Olmert up on the deal in September. Everyone was reading the proverbial map on the wall and knew the Gaza situation was about to explode. Why not seize the moment, sign, settle and create your state?

I understand why negotiations were stopped in the end of December, what I don’t understand is why they did not happen sooner. Or maybe, I do.

Operation Cast Lead was the excuse. (Incidentally, there is a major language issue surrounding the operation in Gaza. In Hebrew, the name for the operation is Oferet Mitzukah. Oferet Mitzukah translates to mean cast lead as in the metal, not lead as in to be the first in line and having everyone follow. The name comes from a line in a poem by Chaim Nachman Bialik and draws on the image of light unto the world emitted by a lead menorah lit at the Kotel.)

Had Abbas accepted the Olmert Map the Palestinian situation and the entire Middle East would be a different place today. But he did not. He could not. He did not have the strength to make a decision on his own, nor did not he have the strength to bring the map to the people, to try and convince them that it was a good deal.

The Olmert map is far from perfect. It is, however, a realistic and equitable response to a very serious issue. Most Israelis would have signed off on it. Most settlers could have lived with it. It’s the Palestinians who have the problem.

Micah D. Halpern is a columnist and a social and political commentator. Read his latest book THUGS. He maintains The Micah Report at www.micahhalpern.com