“In the next fifty years, you will not find a single Israeli leader who suggests what I suggest to you now.

“Sign it! Sign it and let us change the date!”

It was in 2008. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was the length of the Palestinian leader to accept a deal believed to have brought peace to the Middle East.

It was a two -state solution – a possibility that seems impossible today.

If implemented, it has created a Palestinian state on more than 94 % of the occupied West Bank.

Olmert Map has now developed almost legendary position. Various interpretations have emerged over the years, but it never revealed the media.

yet.

in Israel and the Palestinians: the road to October 7The latest series of documentary director Norma Persie available on IPlayer from Monday, Olmert reveals the map he says he showed to Mahmoud Abbas at a meeting in Jerusalem on September 16, 2008.

“This is the first time that I offer this map to the media,” he told film makers.

It appears, in detail, the region Olmert proposed to Israel – 4.9 % of the West Bank.

It would include the major Jewish settlement blocks – just like previous proposals dating back to the late 1990s.

On the other hand, the Prime Minister said that Israel would abandon an equal amount of Israeli territory, along the edges of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Palestinian tires will be connected via a tunnel or highway – again, which has been discussed before.

In the film, Olmert remembers the Palestinian leader’s response.

He said: “The Prime Minister, this is very dangerous. It is very dangerous,” he said.

It is important, the Olmert plan included a proposed solution to the thorny Jerusalem issue.

Each side will be able to demand parts of the city as its capital, while the “Holy Basin” administration – including the old city, is handed over with its religious positions and the surrounding areas – to a trustees committee consisting of Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United States .

The effects of the map, on the Jewish settlements, were enormous.

If the plan was implemented, dozens of societies, scattered throughout the West Bank and the Jordan Valley, would have been evacuated.

When the former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, removed a few thousand Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, he was considered a national shock by those who have an Israeli right.

The evacuation of most of the West Bank was a larger challenge without borders, including tens of thousands of settlers, with the risk of very real violence.

But the test never came.

At the end of their meeting, Olmert refused to hand over a copy of the map to Mahmoud Abbas unless the Palestinian leader signed it.

Abbas refused, saying that he needed to show his map experts, to make sure they understood exactly what was presented.

Olmert says that the two agreed to the map expert meeting the next day.

“We have separated, as you know, like us about to start a historical step forward,” says Olmert.

The meeting never happened. While they were moving away from Jerusalem that night, the Chief of Staff of President Abbas, accompanied by Hosseini, remembers the atmosphere in the car.

“Of course, we laughed,” says in the movie.

The Palestinians believed that the plan had died in the water. Olmert, who was involved in a relevant corruption scandal, has already been planning to resign.

Hosseini says: “It is unfortunate that Olmert, regardless of how wonderful it was … was a lame duck, and therefore, we will not go anywhere with this.”

The situation in Gaza also holds things. After months of missile attacks from the Hamas -controlled Hamas area, Olmert ordered the main Israeli attack, as he was working at the end of December, which led to three weeks of severe fighting.

But Olmert told me that he was “very smart” for ABBAS to sign the deal. Then, if the Israeli Prime Minister in the future tried to cancel it, “he could have told the world that failure was the mistake of Israel.”

The Israeli elections followed by February. Benjamin Netanyahu has become Likud, an audio opponent of the Palestinian state, Prime Minister.

Olmert plan, map, fading from the show.

The former Prime Minister says he is still waiting for Abbas’s response, but his plan has since joined a long list of lost opportunities to end the Israeli -Palestinian conflict.

In 1973, the former Israeli diplomat, Aba Eban, mocked the Palestinians “never miss the opportunity to miss a chance.” It is a phrase Israeli officials repeatedly repeated in the years.

But the world is more complicated than this, especially since the two sides signed the historic Oslo agreements in 1993.

The peace process, which was shook hands with the grass at the White House between former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, had moments of real hope, interspersed with the tragedy. In the end, it led to failure.

The reasons are complicated and there is a lot of blame for roaming but in fact, the stars were not properly aligned.

I saw this lack of alignment 24 years ago.

In January 2001, at the Egyptian TABA resort, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators once again saw the outlines of the deal.

A member of the Palestinian delegation drew a rough map on a handkerchief and told me that for the first time, they were looking at the outlines of a viable Palestinian state.

However, the talks were not related, as it drowned due to the pseudonym in the streets of the West Bank and Gaza, where the second Palestinian intifada, or the “uprising”, last September.

Once again, Israel was in the midst of a political transition. Prime Minister Ehud Barak has already resigned. Ariel Sharon defeated him comfortably a few weeks later.

The map on the handkerchief, just like the Olmert Map after eight years, may show.