Israel Offers Palestinians A Deal
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:
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.