A leading Israeli-Arab politician has reacted with anger to an Israeli peace plan for exchanging Arab villages from its sovereign territory for Jewish blocs in the West Bank.
The proposal of territorial compensation is part of a framework plan being drafted by Israel for a final peace deal with the Palestinians.
The plan will be considered the basis for the future resumption of final status talks between the Israeli and Palestinian sides, which will also present it to the international peace conference scheduled for the fall.
Muhammad Baraka, an Arab MK and head of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, criticized the plan as part of the continuous Israeli efforts to get rid of the Arab community.
Baraka, who came to Ramallah seeking a Palestinian “no” to the plan, told reporters that Arabs in Israel were the indigenous people of the country and their status would remain untouchable.
According to the plan, Israel proposes transferring the densely populated area of the “triangle,” the name, which refers to a concentration of several Israeli-Arab towns and villages located in the central district and adjacent to the Green Line, the actual line that separates Israel from the West Bank areas.
Israeli officials have devoted their skills to finding pretexts for blocking every opportunity for peacemaking, Baraka added.
“If they really want peace, then they have to unconditionally remove the wall and all illegal settlements.”
Recent Israeli statistics showed that the Arab community in Israeli forms 19.8% of the total population. This percentage includes east Jerusalem residents and the Druze community in the Golan Heights.
Through the mechanism of territorial compensation, the Palestinians would receive areas equivalent to 100 percent of the territories Israel captured during the 1967 war.
The proposal includes a timetable for negotiations on issues of final status agreements, such as Jerusalem, borders and refugees’ rights of return to the lands they left behind during the 1948 war.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office dismissed the existence of such a plan to annex settlements blocs that were founded on areas amounting to about five percent of the West Bank’s area.
Meanwhile, Palestinian and Israeli sources revealed a new meeting between Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas next week as part of efforts to expedite progress in their talks to reach an understanding ahead of the international peace conference.