DEBKAfile: Mitchell presents US land swap plan that leaves Israel settlement blocs in place – report

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In some versions of the following report, Mitchell proposes a swap of the Galilee triangle (a region where Israeli Palestinians predominate) for the major Israeli settlement blocks. Maybe Abbas is willing utterly to abase himself to the USA, but leaving Israel with the Ariel settlement would put Israel in control of the main aquifer in the Occupied Territories while transferring the Galilee triangle to the PA would mean that Israel would feel much more free to ruin that region's economy or to send the IDF to rampage through it in an orgy of Zionist spree killing and genocide as the IDF recent perpetrated in Gaza. Not only would the proposal if genuine mean the bantustanization of the Occupied Territories, but it would add a large part of Israeli Palestinians to the bantustans.

Mitchell presents US land swap plan leaving Israel settlement in place – report

DEBKAfile Special Report

June 10, 2009, 5:17 PM (GMT+02:00)

US Middle East envoy George Mitchell comes with new plan?

Western sources report that President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell presented Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas with a new American plan for swapping territory when they met in Ramallah Wednesday June 10. DEBKAfile's sources report that this plan holds the prospect of leaving the major Jewish West Bank settlements blocs under Israeli sovereignty in return for handing Israeli land to the Palestinians.

This plan indicates that expectations of a major crisis between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government over the settlement issue were exaggerated. It means that if the large Jewish blocs and East Jerusalem districts are to stay in Israeli hands, Washington will have no cause to object to their expansion to accommodate population growth.

Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu will be delivering a major speech Sunday evening, June 14, at Bar Ilan University in which he promises to spell out his government's positions on peace and security. Tuesday night, he and the US envoy held a four-hour discussion, half of that time without advisers.