Ehud Olmert's stunning 2008 concession plan

Jerusalem would have been divided, with a Palestinian capital in the eastern section. A tunnel or highway link would have connected Gaza with the West Bank.

By HERB KEINON FEBRUARY 25, 2025 18:42

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hold a news conference in New York (photo credit: REUTERS)

In a documentary episode the BBC uploaded Monday to its online streaming service, former prime minister Ehud Olmert presented for the first time the map he offered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the waning days of his tenure in 2008.

The concessions are stunning.

Under Olmert’s plan, the Palestinians would have received a state on more than 94% of the territory taken during the Six-Day War, with an additional 5% of Israeli territory tacked on to their state along the edges of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

Jerusalem would have been divided, with a Palestinian capital in the eastern section. The Old City—including the Temple Mount and the Western Wall—would have come under an international administration made up of trustees from Israel, Palestine, the US, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.

A tunnel or highway link would have connected Gaza with the West Bank. The major settlement blocs of Ma’ale Adumim, Gush Etzion, and Ariel—along with 45 settlements and 254,000 settlers—would have been incorporated into Israel. Another 78 settlements, home to 88,000 people at the time would have, under this plan, been evacuated, Gush Katif-style.

Olmert, Bush, Abbas370 (credit: Reuters)

Abbas simply never responded to the offer.

Also on Monday, The New York Times ran a story quoting Mousa Abu Marzouk, the Qatar-based head of Hamas’s foreign relations office, as saying that had he known the scale of destruction Israel would unleash upon Gaza, he would not have supported the October 7 Hamas attack.

“If it was expected that what happened would happen, there wouldn’t have been October 7,” he said.

Those two revelations -- the Olmert map and the Marzouk acknowledgment—are part of a much larger picture. A Palestinian-American blogger and Atlantic Council senior fellow, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, connected them in a notable post on X.

Under the opening sentence, “When will Palestinian leaders ever apologize to their people?” Alkhatib, who was born in Saudi Arabia to a Palestinian family that moved back to Gaza in 2000, wrote:

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“In the span of 24 hours, the irresponsibility of Palestinian leadership was on display to the entire world, whereby the lives of Palestinians were considered secondary in the planning of a major terror attack while the prospects of independence, freedom, and sovereignty for the Palestinian people were squandered due to hesitation, indecisiveness, and failing to appreciate the limits of the Palestinian position.”

Alkhatib, a naturalized US citizen who first went to the US as a high school student to study in 2015, said that this reflects the “tragedy of the Palestinian national movement” that always believed the Palestinians would eventually find themselves in a better negotiating position, able to get a better deal.

“This idea that the Arabs and Palestinians never really lost in 1948, 1967, after the Second Intifada, or now after the disastrous October 7 fiasco permeates many facets of Palestinian political life, leading some to believe that somehow one day, conditions will allow for the full liberation of Palestine, the return of millions of refugees and their descendants to mainland Israel, and the end of the Zionist project that created Israel.” 

He wrote that the Palestinian leadership has lacked the courage to reset public expectations and acknowledge hard truths: the right of return is a fantasy, perpetual refugee status hinders nation-building, armed resistance has been an epic failure and a massive waste of resources and lives, Israel is a permanent reality, and “political adventurism and suicidalism” only deepen Palestinian suffering.

Palestinian leaders failures

Palestinian leaders must acknowledge their failures and “crimes against their own people” and apologize for perpetuating a vicious cycle that enriches a few while keeping millions in misery, he continued. Embracing peace and acceptance of Israel is the only path to preserving their future and achieving true independence.

“Palestinian statehood cannot be achieved in spite of Israel; it cannot be imposed upon Israel; it cannot be screamed at Jews and Zionists around the world. Instead, it requires winning over Israelis and convincing them that Palestinians are willing partners to the Jewish people, able to cast aside their historical grievances in the pragmatic pursuit of a better future.”

He concluded that change and transformation must come from within. The problem runs deeper than just Hamas: “it is about transforming the collective mindset to undo decades of external interference, regional negligence, and internal incompetence.”

Alkhatib wrote these words from the US. It would have been impossible for him to write them in Gaza. But it is precisely these ideas that need amplification.

It is words like these that should appear in the op-ed pages of newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post, not the endless stream of pieces that perpetuate the idea of Palestinian victimhood and of Israeli “racism,” colonialism,” and “apartheid.” It is precisely those pieces that fuel a narrative that removes responsibility for the Palestinians’ fate from Palestinian leaders and the people who -- let’s not forget -- voted Hamas into power. 

On September 16, 2008, Olmert offered a plan the Palestinians rejected. Could he have implemented the plan? No, he was already on his way out of office. But had the Palestinians said “yes,” they would have demonstrated a willingness to compromise on maximalist demands that, in effect, call for Israel’s elimination.

They never have. That refusal paved the way for Hamas and October 7 --  an attempt to achieve those same maximalist goals, not through negotiation, which they understood would never happen, but by brutal, mind-numbing, medieval-style violence.

Alkhatib has the clarity to see that this will never succeed and only bring more and more suffering to the Palestinians.  The sad truth: only a Palestinian living in Washington can say this aloud. The even sadder truth: his words have little resonance in Gaza, east Jerusalem, or the West Bank.