The Israeli prime minister,
Ehud Olmert, said his country would have to withdraw from “almost all”
the land it captured in the 1967 war and divide Jerusalem in order to
agree long-awaited peace deals with the Palestinians and Syria.

His
comments came in a newspaper interview ahead of the Jewish new year but
days after his resignation. He remains in his post as a caretaker prime
minister, but is thought unlikely to be able to follow through with any
of his proposals.

In the interview with Nahum Barnea and Shimon
Shiffer, two senior political columnists for Yedioth Ahronoth, Olmert
talked about peace with the Palestinians and the Syrians, as well as
continuing to maintain his innocence over a series of high-profile
corruption investigations, which forced him to step down.

“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,” Olmert said. “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.”

Israel wants to keep some of the settlement blocs in
the West Bank, but in return for any occupied land it keeps the
Palestinians want a land swap for territory of equal size and quality
within Israel.

“For the territories we leave in our hands, we
will have to give compensation in the form of territories within the
state of Israel at a ratio that is more or less 1:1,” said Olmert,
adding that an Israeli withdrawal would have to include parts of East
Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 war. But the prospect of
dividing the city remains hugely contentious within Israel, although
few believe a peace deal could work without a Palestinian capital in
East Jerusalem.

On Syria, Olmert said his government began secret
talks in February 2007. He said he believed Israel would have to give
up the Golan Heights in return for Damascus ending its close
relationship with Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas.

Olmert admitted that
such comments by an Israeli leader were rare. He also seemed to admit
that his thinking in the past had been mistaken, particularly on his
previous belief that Jerusalem should remain wholly inside Israel.

“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,” said Olmert. He has taken a similar tone in several
speeches since resigning, although he went further in this interview
than before.

Olmert’s goal, wrote Barnea and Shiffer, was to
defend his conduct and leave a legacy, a legacy that might make life
harder for Tzipi Livni, who is trying to form a coalition government
that would make her prime minister. “There is no diplomatic fog in this
interview that she can hide behind,” they noted.