Politics
Out of context: Reply #1286
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Meanwhile....
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel must give up almost the entire occupied West Bank including east Jerusalem as the price for peace with the Palestinians, in an interview published on Monday.
"We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice we will withdraw from almost all the territories, if not all the territories," said Olmert, who heads a transitional government following his September 21 resignation.
"We will leave a percentage of these territories in our hands, but will have to give the Palestinians a similar percentage, because without that there will be no peace," he told the mass-circulation newspaper.
"What I am saying to you now has not been said by any Israeli leader before me," Olmert told the Yediot Aharonot daily in what was widely seen as the political testament of an outgoing leader left with only limited powers.
Giving up parts of the city is key to Israel's security, Olmert said, pointing to deadly July attacks by Palestinians from east Jerusalem who ploughed through crowded streets with bulldozers.
"Whoever wants to hold on to all of the city's territory will have to bring 270,000 Arabs inside the fences of sovereign Israel. It won't work," Olmert said.
"I am not trying to justify retroactively what I did for 35 years. For a large portion of these years, I was unwilling to look at reality in all its depth," he said.
The Yediot Aharonot said Olmert "admits that he erred in his foreign policy views and actions for decades."