Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's offer to give away all of the Golan Heights and most of Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem is a plan for "national suicide" and not for peace, according to former Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Dr. Yuval Steinitz (Likud). Olmert made the statements to a Hebrew daily in a pre-Rosh HaShanah interview.

 

Knesset Member Steinitz said that the outgoing Prime Minister's views defy all intelligence. He noted that even American presidential candidates Senators John McCain and Barack Obama understand that Israel needs defensible borders. He said that giving up the land suggested by Olmert would allow Syria and the Palestinian Authority (PA) to control hills that overlook the hills of the rest of the country, including the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and BenGurionAirport.