Israel Offers Outline to Divide Jerusalem

Wall workers and security men are seen next to a section of Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank village of Hizma on the outskirts of Jerusalem, Thursday, May 4, 2006. Breaking an old taboo, Israel's new government is drawing up plans to divide the holy city of Jerusalem by giving up Arab neighborhoods, an architect of the program said. Under the plan, which would be executed unilaterally if efforts to resume peace talks fail, Jerusalem's Old City, its holy shrines and the adjacent neighborhoods, would become a "special region with special understandings," but remain under Israeli sovereignty, said Otniel Schneller, a lawmaker in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima Party.(AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) (Muhammed Muheisen - AP)

The United States has long held the position that "borders and Jerusalem and all final status issues ... ultimately have to be decided in negotiations between the parties," U.S. Embassy spokesman Stewart Tuttle said.

But Washington is not likely to oppose unilateral Israeli pullouts from the West Bank.

Olmert's plan involves dismantling dozens of Jewish settlements in the West Bank with tens of thousands of people and moving them to larger settlement blocs in the territory that Israel hopes to hold onto under a final peace deal.

Israel has said it will give the Hamas-led Palestinian government time to agree to international demands to recognize Israel, accept past peace deals and renounce violence. More than a month into its rule, Hamas has rejected the demands, Israel has cut off all ties with what it has labeled an enemy entity, and it appears increasingly likely the Jewish state will draw its borders on its own.

"The continuation of the scattered settlements throughout the West Bank creates an inseparable mix of populations that will threaten the existence of the state of Israel as a Jewish state," Olmert told parliament as he presented his government Thursday.

If necessary, he said, "we will also act without the Palestinian Authority's agreement to reach an understanding that will first and foremost be based on the correct definition of Israel's borders."

That's a position hotly rejected by the Palestinians, who say the result will be a truncated territory on which it will be impossible to build a viable state.

"President Mahmoud Abbas refuses to accept any unilateral steps and rejects any provisional solutions," said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a senior spokesman for Abbas, a moderate who wields considerable power as president even though Hamas controls the parliament and Cabinet.

Under Olmert's plan, the 460-mile West Bank separation barrier will roughly serve as the border, with some alterations. The barrier, as envisioned now, puts some 9.5 percent of the West Bank inside Israel, including Jewish settlement blocs and other areas Israel considers to be strategically important.

Schneller, himself a West Bank settler, would not say which settlements or how many settlers would be evacuated under Olmert's plan _ although he said it would be fewer than the 70,000 settlers Israeli media had speculated.

Schneller said Israel plans to hold on to two main settlement blocs near Jerusalem, Maaleh Adumim and Gush Etzion, and the large Ariel settlement bloc jutting deep into the West Bank. Israel also plans to hold on to the Jordan River Valley as a security border. Settlements on the eastern side of the barrier, including Schneller's, will likely go.