Israel Offers Palestinians A Deal

(CBS/AP)  Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered wide-ranging peace concessions to Palestinians on Monday if they turned away from violence, saying they would be able to achieve an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in real peace talks with Israel.

In some of his most conciliatory remarks since winning election in March, Olmert directly addressed the Palestinians, promising to reduce checkpoints, release frozen funds and free prisoners in exchange for a serious Palestinian push for peace.

"I hold out my hand in peace to our Palestinian neighbors in the hope that it won't be returned empty," Olmert said.

Palestinians in Gaza had not fired rockets at Israel in 24 hours, a sign that the two-day-old cease-fire is taking hold, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger. However, Palestinian militants in Gaza fired two rockets at Israel on Monday, despite the cease-fire, Palestinian witnesses said. Israeli rescue services said there were no reports of injuries from the rockets.

The cease fire does not apply to the West Bank, where Israeli troops killed two Palestinians, including a militant commander. His faction said it would reconsider its commitment to the truce.

In other developments:

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas is going on his first tour of Arab countries, including Israel's archenemies Syria and Iran, as part of a mission to garner support for his badly battered government, an official said Monday. Haniyeh has not left the Gaza Strip, where he lives, since taking office in March.

During an interview on the ABC News program "This Week" on Sunday, Jordan's King Abdullah his top concern in the region was the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which he called the "core issue" in the Middle East

Abdullah will host President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Amman on Wednesday and Thursday. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also will be in Jordan, an ally of Washington, at the same time as the president attends a Mideast democracy and development conference at the Dead Sea. U.S. and Arab officials may hold a separate meeting to revive Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, but the prospects for that were still unclear.

It's not the new Mideast cease-fire that's topping the news in Israel, but rather, an unrepentant serial rapist who escaped from police custody in Tel Aviv. Worried mothers are picking up their daughters at schools. "The children are afraid," one mother said. Shops have already sold out of mace and pepper spray, and a massive police manhunt is under way.

A top Israeli soccer goalie playing for a Spanish team was harassed by another Spanish team's fans during a game recently. Every time Dudu Awate placed the ball for a goal kick, the fans used racial epithets and raised Palestinian flags, reports the Israel news site Ynet.

Olmert's offer to restart long-stalled peace talks came a day after the two sides implemented a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, ending five months of widespread violence there and raising hopes that the agreement would lead to new peace efforts. It also raised the diplomatic stakes ahead of a visit to the region by President Bush.

Relations between Israel and the Palestinians, already low after more than five years of fighting, further plummeted in January when the militant Hamas group won Palestinian parliamentary elections.

But in recent days, there have been signs of progress. Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to a cease-fire in Gaza that took effect Sunday morning, stirring hopes that further agreements could follow.

"The uncompromising extremism of your terror organizations ... haven't brought you closer to achieving the goal that I'm convinced many of you share — to establish a Palestinian state," he said.

Olmert's speech Monday at a ceremony commemorating the death of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, was an effort to entice the Palestinians to return to peace talks, with the Israeli leader promising an immediate improvement in their lives.

"We cannot change the past and we will not be able to bring back the victims on both sides of the borders," he said. "All that we have in our hands to do today is to stop additional tragedies."

He said that if the Palestinians establish a new government committed to carrying out the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan and securing Shalit's release, then he would call for an immediate meeting with Abbas "to have a real, open, honest, serious dialogue between us."

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the Palestinians were ready to negotiate a final peace deal.

"I believe Mr. Olmert knows he has a partner, and that is President Abbas. He knows that to achieve peace and security for all, we need to shoot for the end game," Erekat said.

As a first step, Erekat said, the two sides need to sustain the fragile cease-fire along the Israel-Gaza border and also extend it to the West Bank. "That will open the key to a political horizon," he said.

Hawkish Israeli opposition leaders like Benny Elon say the cease-fire with the Palestinians is a disaster.

"This is not our interest. Our interest now is to clean (the) Gaza Strip from all of the infrastructure of the terror," Elon said.

The Israeli army agrees, reports Berger: it says the Palestinians are smuggling tons of weapons from Egypt into Gaza, and will use the truce to prepare for the next round of conflict.

In what was billed in advance as a major policy speech, Olmert said that Palestinians stood at a "historic crossroads" and could choose to continue on the path of violence or peace.

Olmert said that Israel was willing to make far-reaching concessions if they chose peace.

"We, the state of Israel, will agree to the evacuation of many territories and the settlements that we built there. This is extremely difficult for us, like the splitting of the Red Sea. We will do it for real peace," he said.

Olmert also said that Israel planned to release "many Palestinian prisoners," including those serving long sentences, as a trust-building measure after Palestinian militants freed Shalit alive and healthy.

Israel will also ease the checkpoints across the West Bank, improve the border terminals in Gaza, release the frozen money to the Palestinians and help develop a plan to rehabilitate their crippled economy

In exchange, Olmert said Palestinians would have to renounce violence, recognize Israel's right to live in peace and security and give up their demands to allow refugees from the 1948 Mideast War to return to their homes in what is now Israel.

[sandycat2]

Sorry, patriot, my figures are not lies. I got the info from a book written by a former Palestinian terrorist. He said his grandfather sold land in Isreal to Jews and so di Arafat's grandfather. I advise you to read Why I left Jihad by ex-muslim terrorist, Walid Shoebat. The book will open your eyes to the lies spoken by the Arabs and the Palestinians. And the British got the land in Isreal because they fought the Arabs there who supported Hitler and Nazi Germany in WW2.

[patriotic9]

Palestinians didn't get that land by killing jews.If you read the history,the last crusade fought between SALADIN and the CHRISTIAN MONARCH was a fight between moslems and christians which means that land was under the rule of christians not jews.If christians had got that land from jews,then jews should get lands from christians which by the way doesn't make any sense either as this is 21st century and those conflicts on the land were thousands of years ago.It is my advise to all of you CHRISTIANS,JEWS and MOSLEMS to forget your thousands of years old religions in this 21st century which have don't nothing but have destroyed the peace of the world.If you people want to fight and kill each other,do it but not on our tax dollars.When we AMERICANS help one group on the other by our tax dollars,the other group becomes our enemy the price of which we are paying in the form of HATRED,TERRORISM and 9/11 specially when we help a group which denies human beings to be created equal like our GREAT LEADER,SIR THOMAS JAFFERSON has said and believe in occupying people's LAND and call that land a promised land for them from a RACIST GOD,who hasn't promised me a SINGLE PENNY,we pay the price by the lives and money of our fellow US citizen which doesn't make any sense at all.

According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, as of May 2006, of Israel's 7 million people, 77% were Jews, 18.5% Arabs, and 4.3% "others".Among Jews, 68% were Sabras (Israeli-born), mostly second or third-generation Israelis, and the rest are olim: 22% from Europe and the Americas, and 10% from Asia and Africa, including the Arab countries

[patriotic9]

sandycat2
All the reports and statistics you have given are based on LIES and FABRICATIONS just like the REPORTS and STATISTICS presented in UN SECURITY COUNCIL by COLLIN POWEL about WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION in IRAQ,just like the FAIRY TALE stories in THOUSANDS of YEARS OLD BIBLE with THOUSANDS of VERSIONS which contradict each other,just like those HOLY GOD-LOVING RELIGIOUS PEOPLE who claim HOMOSEXUALITY to be a sin and then SEXUALLY MOLEST and SODOMIZE those young innocent AMERICAN BOYS who call them father.You said that EUROPEAN INVADERS in PALESTINE bought houses from the PALESTINIANS what about the whole big cities like TEL AVIV,HAIFA,etc.If those PALESTINIANS sold not only the houses but the whole cities like Tel Aviv,why didn't they buy houses somewhere else with that money.Whey their GENERATIONS after GENERATIONS are born and grown up in REFUGEE CAMPS.As far as 70% ownership by BRITISH,who gave them those ownership.Weren't they forieng occupiers themsleves who occupied.You don't know about the MASS MESSACRE in SABRA and SHATILLA by our tax money which resultaed in outrage agaisnt our AMERICAN NATION for which we are still paying the price.You don't know about the EUROPEANS from places like RUSSIA are still brought in PALESTINE who consider that land to be promised for them because of their RACE and because of being GOD-CHOSEN which is an IDEOLOGY based on RACIAL DISCRIMINATION and INJSUTICE.

[sandycat2]

The land which makes up Isreal was not stolen from Palestinians. In 1946, the British Mandate Government surveyed the land. Ownership was as follows:
70%-ownedby British government, in trust for the Jewish National Homeland, transferred by international law to Isreal
8.6%-owned by Jews
3.3%-owned by resident Arabs
16.5%-owned by non-resident Arabs
The Jews began buying up land from Arabs, beginning with the uncultivated land. Jews took the uncultivated land and turned it into cultivated producing land.
And their never was any Palestinians before 1948. The Palestinians is made up in order to kill Jews and destroy Isreal and keep the fight going. People like you Patriotic9 fall for all the Palestinian lies. You should be called Idiotic9 instead.

[feelfree1]

As long as Olmert is still killing civilians, illegally occuying other people's land, and imprisoning women and young Palestinian children, I don't think that he is in any position to be making any deals, epecially since he just had his *** handed to him in Lebanon.

One the Israeli leadership decides to accept the rule-of-law, and to rejoin the human race, they will be in a better position from which to bargain.

[patriotic9]

Your geography is so weak like your common sense.Hitler was not from PALESTINE and the center of HOLOCAUST and ANTISEMITISM was GERMANY.If ISRAEL has a right to exist,she has a right to exist in GERMANY where those EUROPEANS were killed by HITLER.Why it was JUSTIFIED and LEGITIMATE to bring EUROPEANS from different EUROPEAN COUNTRIES into PALESTINE after WWII when the poor PALESTINIANS had nothing to do with the CRIMES and ATROCITIES commited by HITLER.Palestinians don't even understand the language HITLER used to speak.You conservative people have SERIOUS MENTAL ISSUES.Now I understand why BUSH had attacked Iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11 instead of capturing OSAMA BIN FORGOTTEN from TORA BORA,why REPUBLICAN FOLEY did what he did and why the RELIGIOUS,HOLY,GOD-LOVING people SODOMIZE those innocent boys in the CHURCHES who call them FATHER.

[mynameissam2]

You think I would give an argument based upon a religious text when I did not cite one in my first answer?

Why would you think that?

Israel was given Israel because of Anti-semitism and the Holocaust. You are an insane liberal who hides behind the internet because the opinions you espouse makes zero sense to any person in the real world. Thus I will not answer you anymore. Israelis civilians are attacked while you sit on your harry butt.

[patriotic9]

If you are loyal to UNITED STATES,her people and her constitution,just expalin
1)How does UNITED STATES support to the EUROPEAN INAVDERS in PALESTINE benifits UNITED STATES and HER PEOPLE?
2)Why should we take OIL in cheaper prices from ARABS and then support their those enemies who were brought in their land after WWII from different EUROPEAN COUNTRIES to occupy their land by force?
Please don't give me any answer from a RELIGIOUS text as I am a LOYAL AMERICAN who firmly believes in the CONSTITUTION which separates CHURCH from STATE.

[patriotic9]

I said that it's wrong if AMERICANS work day and night to pay tax to our govt and those NON-AMERICAN EUROPEAN INVADERS IN PALESTINE who don't live in USA,don't pay tax to our govt,cause HATRED,TERRORISM and 9/11 against our nation to snatch more then $3B from our tax payed money for the killing of those who give us OIL in cheaper prices.What I said in the above statement makes sense to anybody who is not MENTALLY RETARDED.If you think I don't make sense,prove it by reason that why AMERICANS should be treated as GOD-NEGLECTED and why the NON AMERICAN EUROPEAN INVADERS IN PALESTINE should be treated as GOD-CHOSEN.It doesn't make sense to me(does it make sense to you)that why AMERICANS should pay the price of ILLEGITIMATE and UNJUSTIFIED EXISTANCE OF ISRAEL on the cost of AMERICAN MONEY and AMERICAN LIVES?I don't think it benifits UNITED STATES in any way.If you think it does,explain by reasons how?Again because AMERICANS are GOD-NEGLECTED and the EUROPEAN INVADERS IN PALESTINE are GOD-CHOSEN?