(IsraelNN.com) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made what he hopes is an offer that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas can’t refuse: a final status deal that can be implemented in stages, with a long “shelf life.”

The prime minister is trying to forge a “shelf agreement” with the PA before he steps down from office, having said he will resign after his Kadima party chooses a new leader next month.

The deal includes a pullout from 93 percent of Judea and Samaria, additional land in the Negev to make up the difference, free passage between Gaza, Judea and Samaria without security checks and permanent borders.

The free passage would be conditioned on Abbas’s retaking control of Gaza from the Hamas terrorist organization.

The border would follow the current Judea-Samaria separation barrier, as widely expected and predicted.

The remaining 7 percent of the region, which includes the larger blocs of Ma’aleh Adumim, Gush Etzion, greater Jerusalem and northern Samaria, would be annexed by Israel and would no longer be under a construction freeze.

Implementation in 2 Steps
The deal would be carried out in two stages, according to the proposal detailed in the Hebrew daily Haaretz.

The first stage is dependent on Olmert’s ability to sell the plan to the Israeli public and involves the voluntary abandonment of communities outside the proposed border, with legislation to compensate Israelis who relocate on their own.

It is anticipated that many of the voluntary expellees would move to new housing units to be built in the remaining seven percent of Yesha to be left to Israel as soon as the borders are agreed upon and an agreement in principle is signed.

The second stage, which, according to the report, would only take place once the PA completes “a series of internal reforms and [are] capable of carrying out the entire agreement” involves forcibly expelling the remaining Jews from their homes east of the border.

Deferring the Issue of Jerusalem, No ‘Right of Return’
The proposal does not define the status of Jerusalem.  Both Olmert and Abbas agreed to shelve the issue for the time being, recognizing that this was a problem that could not be solved in the near future.

However, Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza have constantly been assured that the PA leadership will not accept any agreement for a state that does not include all of the land that was restored to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, including eastern Jerusalem.

Under the proposal, the so-called PA Arab “right of return” was rejected outright, and exists only in context of a “return” to PA territory.

This is in contrast to the PA demand that Israel allow some five million foreign Arab descendants of those who fled the state during the 1948 war to immigrate to Israel and reclaim homes or land where their families lived generations ago.
 
The plan also calls for a PA state that would be demilitarized and without an army.  The present security force, trained by top brass from the US Armed Forces, would be retained as a police force.

However, the PA is demanding a security force capable of defending against “outside threats,” according to the report. It is not clear which “outside threats” the PA leadership referred to.