Where’s the Coverage? Abbas Already Spurned Everything Palestinians Demand

In an interview with The Tower published two months ago, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave a detailed description of his negotiations with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in September of 2008:

“In the last meeting I brought a big map, like the size of this whole table,” recalls Olmert. “With colors for all the regions that go over to us and the reverse. We would receive 6.3%, they would get 5.8%, but they also get a safe passage in a tunnel between Gaza and the West Bank that was the equivalent in territory of the remaining half percent.

[…]

“I completely gave up on having an Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley. That was because I could protect the line of the Jordan River through an international military force on the other side of the Jordan River. There was no opposition on the Palestinian side to our having a presence in warning stations along the mountain range.”

TheTower.org: But you essentially gave up on Israeli sovereignty on the Temple Mount [the holiest site in Judaism]?

Olmert: “Correct, I proposed a compromise on sovereignty over the Temple Mount. There would be no sovereignty for anyone else. There would be the joint administration of the five states [Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Palestine, the United States, and Israel].”

In addition, the article outlines Olmert’s proposal to take in 5,000 Palestinian refugees, 1,000 each year over five years, into Israel proper.

In other words, Olmert offered a territorial proposal based on the 1949 armistice lines –often incorrectly referred to as the 1967 borders– with “land swaps”, contiguity between Gaza and the West Bank, no Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley, relinquishing Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount, and absorption of some Palestinian refugees. This amounts to basically meeting all of the demands Abbas claims he seeks in final status negotiations. And yet, what was his response to Olmert? Olmert says, “I am still waiting for a phone call from him.”

Given the current efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, you’d expect the details of this ground-breaking offer to be picked up widely by the media. However, aside from the Israeli or Jewish press and specialty Web sites, only The Washington Post even mentions Olmert’s spurned proposal.

One could argue that the Olmert offer is “old news,” and indeed, CAMERA covered it at the time.

However, the day before The Tower published the Olmert interview, the magazine also ran an article that includes important new information. After the final meeting between Olmert and Abbas, Abbas returned to Ramallah. Then:

Once there he immediately convened his associates and redrew the map from memory. The document also included text scrawled on its margins, and on the reverse side, details documenting the rest of Olmert’s offer.

The Tower obtained the map, drawn on the official stationery of the office of the president of the Palestinian Authority.

The fact that this deal, with its unprecedented Israeli concessions, was rebuffed by Abbas casts doubt on whether the Palestinian Authority president will accept any peace agreement with the Jewish state. This is essential information when the U.S. Secretary of State is shuttling back and forth between Amman, Ramallah, and Jerusalem simply trying to get negotiations started.

Can Kerry be successful when Abbas has already spurned everything he claims the Palestinians want? Will the Palestinian Arabs accept the existence of Israel within any borders? And… where’s the coverage?