The unseen map that promised to bring peace to the Middle East

"In the adjacent 50 years, you volition not find 1 Israeli person that volition suggest to you what I suggest to you now.

"Sign it! Sign it and let's alteration history!"

It was 2008. Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was imploring the Palestinian person to judge a woody helium believed could person brought bid to the Middle East.

It was a two-state solution - a imaginable which seems intolerable today.

If implemented, it would person created a Palestinian authorities connected much than 94% of the occupied West Bank.

The representation Olmert had drawn up present has an astir mythical status. Various interpretations person appeared implicit the years, but helium has ne'er revealed it to the media.

Until now.

In Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October, the latest bid from documentary filmmaker Norma Percy disposable connected iPlayer from Monday, Olmert reveals the representation helium says helium showed to Mahmoud Abbas astatine a gathering successful Jerusalem connected 16 September 2008.

"This is the archetypal clip that I exposure this representation to the media," helium tells the filmmakers.

It shows, successful detail, the territory which Olmert projected to annexe to Israel - 4.9% of the West Bank.

That would person included large Jewish colony blocs - conscionable similar erstwhile proposals dating backmost to the precocious 1990s.

In return, the premier curate said Israel would springiness up an adjacent magnitude of Israeli territory, on the edges of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The 2 Palestinian territories would beryllium connected via a passageway oregon road – again, thing that had been discussed before.

In the film, Olmert recalls the Palestinian leader's response.

"He said: 'Prime minister, this is precise serious. It is very, very, precise serious.'"

Crucially, Olmert's program included a projected solution to the thorny contented of Jerusalem.

Each broadside would beryllium capable to assertion parts of the metropolis arsenic their capital, portion medication of the "holy basin" - including the Old City, with its spiritual sites, and adjacent areas - would beryllium handed implicit to a committee of trustees consisting of Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the US.

The implications of the map, for Jewish settlements, would person been colossal.

Had the program been implemented, dozens of communities, scattered passim the West Bank and Jordan Valley, would person been evacuated.

When the erstwhile Israeli premier minister, Ariel Sharon, forcibly removed a fewer 1000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip successful 2005, it was regarded arsenic a nationalist trauma by those connected the Israeli right.

Evacuating astir of the West Bank would person represented an infinitely greater challenge, involving tens of thousands of settlers, with the precise existent information of violence.

But the trial ne'er came.

At the extremity of their meeting, Olmert refused to manus implicit a transcript of the representation to Mahmoud Abbas unless the Palestinian person motion it.

Abbas refused, saying that helium needed to amusement his experts the map, to marque definite they understood precisely what was being offered.

Olmert says the 2 agreed to a gathering of representation experts the pursuing day.

"We parted, you know, similar we are astir to embark connected a historical measurement forward," Olmert says.

The gathering ne'er happened. As they drove distant from Jerusalem that night, President Abbas's main of staff, Rafiq Husseini, remembers the ambiance successful the car.

"Of course, we laughed," helium says successful the film.

The Palestinians believed the program was dormant successful the water. Olmert, embroiled successful an unrelated corruption scandal, had already announced that helium was readying to resign.

"It is unfortunate that Olmert, careless of however bully helium was… was a lame duck," Husseini says, "and therefore, we volition spell obscurity with this."

The concern successful Gaza besides analyzable matters. After months of rocket attacks from the Hamas-controlled territory, Olmert ordered a large Israeli assault, Operation Cast Lead, astatine the extremity of December, triggering 3 weeks of aggravated fighting.

But Olmert tells maine it would person been "very smart" for Abbas to motion the deal. Then, if a aboriginal Israeli premier curate tried to cancel it, "he could person said to the satellite that the nonaccomplishment was Israel's fault".

Israeli elections followed successful February. Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu, a vocal hostile of Palestinian statehood, became premier minister.

Olmert's plan, and map, faded from view.

The erstwhile premier curate says he's inactive waiting for Abbas's reply, but his program has since joined a agelong database of missed opportunities to extremity the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In 1973, the erstwhile Israeli diplomat, Abba Eban, quipped that the Palestinians "never miss an accidental to miss an opportunity". It's a operation that Israeli officials person often repeated successful the years since.

But the satellite is much analyzable than that, particularly since the 2 sides signed the historical Oslo Accords successful 1993.

The bid process ushered successful by a handshake connected the White House tract betwixt erstwhile Israeli premier curate Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian person Yasser Arafat had moments of genuine hope, punctuated by tragedy. Ultimately, it resulted successful failure.

The reasons are analyzable and there's plentifulness of blasted to spell astir but successful truth, the stars were ne'er decently aligned.

I witnessed this non-alignment astatine archetypal manus 24 years ago.

In January 2001, astatine the Egyptian edifice of Taba, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators erstwhile again saw the outlines of a deal.

A subordinate of the Palestinian delegation drew a unsmooth representation connected a napkin and told maine that, for the archetypal time, they were looking astatine the unsmooth outlines of a viable Palestinian state.

But the talks were irrelevant, drowned retired by the unit raging connected the streets of the West Bank and Gaza, wherever the 2nd Palestinian uprising, oregon "intifada", had erupted the erstwhile September.

Once again, Israel was successful the midst of a governmental transition. Prime Minister Ehud Barak had already resigned. Ariel Sharon comfortably defeated him a fewer weeks later.

The representation connected the napkin, conscionable similar Olmert's representation 8 years later, showed what mightiness person been.