Ehud Olmert’s Peace Offer

From the end of 2006 until the end of 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert held 36 negotiating sessions with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to reach a peace agreement. Additional talks were held simultaneously between Israel’s Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, and Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qurei.

Olmert presented a comprehensive plan for peace on September 16, 2008. The main elements of Olmert’s proposal were the following:

• Israel would cede almost 94% of the West Bank for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
• Israel would retain approximately 6.4% of the West Bank. “All the lands that before 1967 were buffer zones between the two populations would have been split in half. In return, there would be a swap of land (to the Palestinians) from Israel as it existed before 1967.” Condoleezza Rice states, “Olmert gave Abbas cause to believe that he was willing to reduce that number to 5.8%.”
• Sparsely populated settlements would be evacuated, but Israel would annex Gush Etzion, Ma’ale Adumim, and Ariel. In exchange, Israel offered to give up the areas around Afula-Tirat Tzvi, the Lachish region, an area near Har Adar, and areas in the Judean desert and around Gaza, which equaled 5.8% of Israeli territory.
• Maintain the contiguity of the Palestinian state and create a safe passage between the West Bank and Gaza. “It would have been a tunnel fully controlled by the Palestinians but not under Palestinian sovereignty; otherwise it would have cut the state of Israel in two.”
• Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem would be under Jewish sovereignty; Arab neighborhoods would be under Palestinian sovereignty so that they could be the capital of a Palestinian state.
• No one would have sovereignty in the holy basin in Jerusalem containing sites sacred to Jews, Muslims, and Christians, including the Mount of Olives, the City of David, and part of the Arab neighborhood of Silwan. This area “would be jointly administered by five nations, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Palestinian state, Israel and the United States.”
• No “right of return” for Palestinian refugees. Israel would agree on a humanitarian basis to accept 1,000 refugees every year for five years “on the basis that this would be the end of conflict and the end of claims.” An effort would also be made to establish an international fund to “compensate Palestinians for their suffering.” The agreement would also include recognition of the suffering of Jews from Arab countries who were forced out of their homes after 1948.
• Palestine would have a strong police force, “everything needed for law enforcement.” It would have no army or air force.
• The Palestinian border with Jordan would be patrolled by international forces – possibly from NATO. The Palestinians would not allow any foreign army to enter Palestine, and its government would not be permitted to enter into any military agreement with a country that does not recognize Israel.
• Israel would retain the right to defend itself beyond the borders of a Palestinian state and to pursue terrorists across the border.
• Israel would be allowed access to airspace over Palestine, and the Israel Defense Forces would have rights to disproportionate use of the telecommunications spectrum.

“My idea was that, before presenting it to our own peoples, we first would go to the UN Security Council and get a unanimous vote for support,” Olmert told Bernard Avishai. “Then we would ask the General Assembly to support us, and you can imagine that if we both would ask, only Iran or Syria might say no. Then we would go to a joint session of Congress, then to the European Parliament, then a big ceremony on the White House lawn with 25,000 people, with all the leaders of the region where we would initial it.”

In September 2008, Olmert showed Abbas a map he considered a final offer, not a basis for future negotiations. He told Abbas, “‘This is the offer. Sign it and we can immediately get support from America, from Europe, from all over the world.’ I told him he’d never get anything like this again from an Israeli leader for 50 years. I said to him, ‘do you want to keep floating forever – like an astronaut in space – or do you want a state?’”

“President, I beg you, sign it,” Olmert recalled saying. “We’ll go together to the United Nations, then a joint session of Congress, then the European Parliament. Then we’ll invite all the leaders of the world to Jerusalem. And then we’ll both go for elections and we’ll win on the momentum that this will create.”

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Olmert’s offer “amazing” and warned that “Yitzhak Rabin had been killed for offering far less.”

Abbas told Olmert he needed to study the map but never responded or returned to the talks.

Olmert wrote later in a Washington Post op-ed: “To this day, I cannot understand why the Palestinian leadership did not accept the far-reaching and unprecedented proposal I offered them… It would be worth exploring the reasons that the Palestinians rejected my offer and preferred, instead, to drag their feet, avoiding real decisions.”

Sources: Ehud Olmert, “Stop Focusing on the Settlements to Achieve Peace in the Middle East,” Washington Post, (July 17, 2009);
Greg Sheridan, “Ehud Olmert still dreams of peace,” The Australian, (November 28, 2009);
Bernard Avishai, “A Plan for Peace That Still Could Be,” New York Times Magazine, (February 7, 2011);
Condoleezza Rice, “Condoleezza Rice Memoir: Peace-Process Anguish,” Newsweek, (October 23, 2011);
Avi Isacharoff, “Revealed: Olmert’s 2008 peace offer to Palestinians,” Jerusalem Post, (May 24, 2013);
“Abbas says he rejected Olmert peace offer in 2008 over unseen map,” i24NEWS, (November 19, 2015);
Benny Begin, “Why Abbas Rejects Trump’s Deal (And Any Other Deal With Israel),” Haaretz, (March 6, 2020).
Marcus Walker, Fatima AbdulKarim, and Anat Peled, “The Way to Fix the Middle East Conflict Looks Obvious—Except to Israelis and Palestinians,” Wall Street Journal, (August 18, 2024).