Netanyahu Wants to Keep Jerusalem, Much of W. Bank

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time on Wednesday sketched the broad outlines of his vision for a territorial compromise with the Palestinians, vowing to keep all of Jerusalem under Israeli control and to retain much of the occupied West Bank.

Under the plan, presented to Netanyahu’s top security advisors, Israel would retain full control of “Greater Jerusalem,” including the large Jewish settlements on the city’s outskirts, as well as other clusters of settlements throughout the West Bank, according to a senior Israeli official.

The blueprint also stipulates that Israel remain in control of the strategic Jordan Valley, water resources and key roads. And it drew fire from Palestinian officials.

“This is not a plan for a peace settlement; it’s a plan for confrontation,” said Ahmed Tibi, an advisor to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. “Netanyahu will never be able to impose a settlement like this on the Palestinian people.”

Jewish settler organizations also denounced it, calling on Netanyahu to declare that all settlements will remain under Israeli sovereignty in any permanent status agreement with the Palestinians.

“No Israeli government has the right to determine where there should be Jewish settlements,” said Yehudit Tayar, a spokeswoman for the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. “The settlements are an integral part of the land of Israel and must remain that way.”

The announcement, made as Israelis celebrated--and Palestinians mourned--the 30th anniversary of the capture of East Jerusalem, also came amid escalating tensions here over the two sides’ competing claims to the city.

Israelis gathered at Jerusalem’s holy spots and former battlegrounds to commemorate their military triumph in the 1967 Mideast War--which Israelis call the Six-Day War--while Palestinians quietly recalled the defeat that left Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula in Israeli hands.

Three decades after the war, the political battle for the city remains unresolved. This week, a new front was opened--in the classrooms of East Jerusalem--when Israel announced that it will supervise a matriculation exam for Palestinian high school students. In recent years, the test has been monitored by Palestinians.

Ahmed Korei, the leader of the Palestinian legislature, described Wednesday’s developments as “crazy conduct” aimed at tightening Israel’s hold on the disputed eastern half of Jerusalem and destroying Palestinian institutions within it.

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The legislators, meanwhile, called on students to refuse to take the exam under Israeli supervision. Instead, students should figure out ways to take the test in parks, mosques and other public places, they said.

The mayor of Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert, said this week that he will appoint a committee to ensure that the curriculum in the schools of East Jerusalem conforms with that of schools in other Arab communities inside Israel.

“Our position is that Jerusalem is Israel,” said Shalom Goldstein, Olmert’s advisor on Arab affairs. “And because all the budgets of the schools are coming from Israel, why should Israel finance this and let some other authority use it for its own ideas?”

Despite its annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel has allowed the area’s schools to continue using a Jordanian curriculum, a holdover from Jordan’s rule in the eastern half of the city and the West Bank between 1948 and 1967.

But Goldstein said the Palestinian Authority lately has tried to take control of the schools.

The negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel have been at a standstill since mid-March. But in the session with his security advisors Wednesday, Netanyahu sought to bypass the current disputes, seeking support for his proposal to jump ahead to final negotiations on the issues at the root of the conflict, including settlements, borders and the status of Jerusalem.

In Wednesday’s discussions, Netanyahu reportedly steered clear of maps and numbers and painted his vision of the future in broad brush-strokes, which his aides said represented a starting point for discussions within Israel on the shape of an eventual agreement and not an opening position for talks with the Palestinians.