Abbas says Olmert offered to swap land in Negev for Israeli settlement blocs

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Authority (WJC)–Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has confirmed media reports that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered him Israeli land near the Gaza Strip in exchange for settlement blocs that Israel wanted to annex after a peace deal with the Palestinians.

Abbas said that the proposed swap would have given the Palestinians land that would equal 100 percent of the West Bank. He added that there were no Israeli settlements or Israeli Arab residents in the land that was offered to the Palestinians, according to the report.

“I clarified that I refused to annex even one Israeli Arab citizen,” Abbas was quoted as saying, adding: “[I] felt we could have reached an agreement.”

The map of Olmert’s peace plan was published last week by the Israeli newspaper ‘Haaretz’.  According to the plan reportedly proposed by Olmert the future border between Israel and the Gaza Strip would have been adjacent to several kibbutzim and moshavim whose fields would be given to the Palestinians.

Olmert presented his map to Abbas in September 2008. In an interview with ‘Haaretz’ last week, Abbas said Olmert had presented several drafts of the map

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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress