Israel to give up West Bank territory

JERUSALEM -- Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that Israel will give up territory and relinquish control over most of the West Bank's Palestinians while holding on to main settlement blocs -- his clearest statement about how he sees Israel's future final borders.\nIn his first broadcast interview since coming to power last month, Olmert told Channel 2 TV that if his Kadima Party wins March 28 elections, Israel would hold on to Jerusalem and three major West Bank settlement blocs, along with the strategic Jordan River valley, and it might move by itself if no agreement with the Palestinians can be reached.\n"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."\nIsrael withdrew from the Gaza Strip in the summer, but violence continues in that Palestinian area. Two Palestinian militants were killed in an Israeli airstrike Tuesday.\nOlmert told Channel 2 that Israel would retain "united Jerusalem," a term understood as encompassing the eastern section claimed by the Palestinians for the capital of the state they hope to create. On Tuesday, Olmert toured construction sites of the separation barrier Israel is building in the Jerusalem area and said its completion is a top priority.\nThe barrier is to extend along the length of the West Bank, dipping into the territory to encircle the settlements Olmert listed. Israel says the barrier is necessary to keep suicide bombers out, but Palestinians denounce it as a land grab.\nAbout 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.\nThe bloc around the settlement of Ariel is deepest inside the West Bank, 10 miles from the border with Israel. Gush Etzion and Maaleh Adumim are Jerusalem suburbs.\nWhile stating specifically that the three blocs would be part of Israel, Olmert used a different formula for the Jordan River valley: "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. He refused to give more details.\nOlmert also hinted that Israel might carry out further unilateral withdrawals from lands the Palestinians want for a state, like its summer pullout from the Gaza Strip -- especially now that Hamas militants sworn to Israel's destruction have swept Palestinian elections.