Olmert: No such thing as 'Greater Israel' anymore

[bemildred]

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday said that the concept of "Greater Israel is over. There is no such thing. Anyone who talks that way is deluding themselves."

Addressing the cabinet during the weekly meeting, which focused on the evacuation-compensation bill which proposes offering NIS 1.1 million to families willing to move out of West Bank settlements, Olmert said that this was not always his stance.

"During Camp David I thought that Ehud Barak's concessions were too much, and I told him as much. I thought that land from the Jordan River through to the sea was all ours, but ultimately, after a long and tortured process, I arrived at the conclusion that we must share with those we live with, if we don't want to be a bi-national state." During the meeting, Vice Premier Haim Ramon presented the cabinet with the outline of a plan to offer NIS 1.1 million to Jewish families willing to voluntarily evacuate their homes in the West Bank.

Ramon's proposal is estimated at a total cost of NIS 2.5 billion. The plan would offer settlers who choose to relocate to the Negev an additional 25 percent compensation and those who agree to move the Galilee region an additional 15 percent.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1020929.html

[dtotire]

1. You Have To Accept Reality Sooner Or Later n/t

[LeftishBrit]

2. Glad he's said it. Perhaps easier when you know you're leaving office anyway.

I hope he isn't replaced by Mofaz or Netanyahu, woul would probably go back to hard-line attitudes.

[Prefer]

3. WHo said the notion ever existed

I though it was an Arab conspiracy theory that there ever was the notion of a Greater Israel.

[LeftishBrit]

4. The notion exists, in the sense of an insistence by some on the Right on continuing the Occupation

indefinitely; not yielding any land; and at the extremes, perhap s re-occupying land that was previously relinquished. It's this sort of attitude that Olmert is criticizing.

The idea that Israel wishes to expand to occupy current Arab states, 'from the Nile to the Euphrates', is however a conspiracy theory. To my knowledge, no one, even in the most right-wing Israeli religious parties, has seriously thought of such a thing.