Map that promised to bring peace to the Middle East revealed

"In the next 50 years, you will not find an Israeli leader who will propose to you what I propose to you now. Sign! Sign and let's change history!"

It was 2008. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was pleading with the Palestinian leader to accept a deal that he believed could have brought peace to the Middle East.

It was a two-state solution – a prospect that today seems impossible.

If implemented, it would have created a Palestinian state in more than 94% of the occupied West Bank.

It is known that the map that Olmert had drawn up now has an almost mythical status.

Various interpretations have emerged over the years, but he has never revealed it to the media.

Until now.

In Israel and Palestine: The Road to October 7th – In the latest series from documentary filmmaker Norma Percy available on iPlayer from Monday, Olmert reveals the map he says he showed Mahmoud Abbas at a meeting in Jerusalem on September 16, 2008.

"This is the first time I've exposed this map to the media," he is heard saying.

He details the territory he proposed to annex to Israel – 4.9% of the West Bank.

This would have included the main Jewish settlement blocks – just like previous proposals dating back to the late 1990s.

In exchange, the prime minister said Israel would give up an equal amount of Israeli territory, along the edges of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The two Palestinian territories would be connected via a tunnel or highway – again, something that had been discussed before.

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

He said: "Prime Minister, this is very serious, it is very, very, very serious".

Most importantly, his plan included a proposed solution to the Jerusalem issue, writes with the BBC, the Telegraph reports.

Each side would be able to claim parts of the city as their capital, while administration of the “holy basin” – including the Old City, with its religious sites and adjacent areas – would be handed over to a committee of trustees made up of Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the US.

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

If the plan had been implemented, dozens of communities, scattered throughout the West Bank and Jordan Valley, would have been evacuated.

When the previous Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, forcibly removed several thousand Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, it was considered a national trauma by those on the Israeli right.

Evacuating most of the West Bank would have represented an infinitely greater challenge, involving tens of thousands of settlers, with the real risk of violence.

But the plan was never implemented.

At the end of the meeting, Olmert refused to hand over a copy of the map to Mahmoud Abbas unless the Palestinian leader signed it.

Abbas refused, saying he needed to show his experts the map to make sure they understood exactly what was being offered.

Olmert said the two agreed to a meeting of mapping experts the next day.

"We parted, you know, as if we were about to take a historic step forward," he said.

However, the second meeting never happened.

As they were leaving Jerusalem that night, President Abbas's chief of staff, Rafiq Husseini, recalls the atmosphere in the car.

"Of course, we laughed," he says in the documentary.

Even the Palestinians believed the plan was "dead."

Meanwhile, Olmert, embroiled in a corruption scandal, had already announced that he was planning to resign.

The situation in Gaza is reported to have also complicated matters.

After months of rocket attacks from Hamas-controlled territory, Olmert ordered a major Israeli offensive, Operation Cast Lead, in late December, sparking three weeks of intense fighting.

But according to Olmert, it would have been "very smart" for Abbas to sign the agreement.

Then, if a future Israeli prime minister tried to undo it, "he could have told the world that the failure was Israel's fault."

Israeli elections followed in February.

Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu, a vocal opponent of Palestinian statehood, became prime minister.

Olmert's plan and map faded from view.

The former prime minister says he is still waiting for Abbas' response, but his plan has since joined a long list of missed opportunities to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In 1973, former Israeli diplomat Abba Eban said that Palestinians "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

It's a phrase that Israeli officials have often repeated in the years that followed.

But the world is more complicated than that, especially after both sides signed the historic Oslo Accords in 1993.

The peace process launched by a handshake between former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had moments of real hope, accompanied by tragedy.

Ultimately, it resulted in failure.

In January 2001, in the Egyptian resort of Taba, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators once again saw the framework of an agreement.

A member of the Palestinian delegation drew a rough map on a napkin and said that, for the first time, they were looking at the rough outlines of a viable Palestinian state.

But the talks were inconsequential, drowned out by the violence that erupted on the streets of the West Bank and Gaza, where the second Palestinian uprising, or "intifada," had erupted last September.

Once again, Israel was in the midst of a political transition.

Prime Minister Ehud Barak had already resigned.

Ariel Sharon defeated him a few weeks later.

The map on the napkin, like Olmert's map eight years later, showed what the Middle East could have been. /Telegraph/