ISRAELI PM DISCLOSES NEW WITHDRAWAL/SEPARATION PLAN

Israeli PM Discloses Separation Plan By LAURIE COPANS (A.P.)
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that Israel plans to separate from most of the Palestinians in the West Bank and this would require withdrawing from some of the territory...

"We will disengage from most of the Palestinian population that lives in Judea and Samaria," Olmert told Israel's Channel 2 TV, using the biblical names for the West Bank. "That will obligate us to leave territories under Israeli control today."

Under questioning, Olmert listed West Bank four areas Israel would keep under his vision: Maaleh Adumim, a settlement of 30,000 next to Jerusalem; Gush Etzion, a bloc of settlements south of Jerusalem; Ariel, a settlement of 18,000 deep in the West Bank; and the Jordan River valley.

About three-fourths of Israel's 244,000 West Bank settlers live in the areas Olmert delineated in the TV interview, according to government figures and estimates by the Peace Now settlement watchdog group.

Olmert did not mention the string of small settlements in the Jordan valley. Instead, he said, "It is impossible to abandon control of the eastern border of Israel," he said, without referring to Israeli sovereignty or the string of small settlements there.