Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said he presented the document to former US president George W Bush during a previously secret trip to Washington on December 18.

Abbas had asked then outgoing Israeli premier Ehud Olmert to reply to the proposal in writing, but Olmert had failed to do so, Erekat told foreign correspondents in Jerusalem.

Instead, Olmert chose to use his final weeks before leaving office and before Israel’s February 10 elections to launch the offensive in Gaza just days later, he said.

Erekat said Olmert responded to Abbas’ proposal by making public statements, but not in writing, as requested. Olmert had on several public occasions during his final days in office spoken of the need for concessions in Jerusalem.

The chief Palestinian negotiator said the proposal submitted by Abbas dealt with all of the core issues of the conflict, including Jerusalem and borders.

The Palestinians insisted on a written agreement, Erekat said, because they had learned from the botched peace summit at Camp David of July 2000.

‘Annapolis agreement did not fail,’ Erekat said, referring to the peace process launched by Bush in the Maryland capital in November 2007.

He said Abbas had planned to bring the written agreement to a public referendum, but the war in Gaza in the final days of the Olmert government scuppered that plan.

‘We came too close in (the) Annapolis (process). We turned every possible stone. Yes it’s true we didn’t reach an agreement, because instead of meeting us in Washington on January 3 to put the maps on the table as was agreed, Mr Olmert just went to Gaza,’ Erekat said.

‘We no longer need negotiations. We need decisions and decisions are not made by negotiators, they are made by leaders,’ he urged.

Olmert had previously accused Abbas of refusing to accept a far-reaching offer he had made, because he said the Palestinians were weary of committing to a deal with an outgoing premier as Israel was heading into elections.

‘There was a proposal of Mr Olmert. There was a proposal from President Abbas, but this time we learned from what happened in Camp David. We submitted ours in writing, Olmert talked. I went to the US secretly and handed what we proposed in writing,’ Erekat said.

‘History will show that president Abbas is a man of courage and commitment,’ he said.

Erekat added that the ‘first test’ of the new US administration of Barack Obama was to stop Israeli plans to demolish houses in East Jerusalem and build on E1, a stretch of occupied West Bank land linking the Jewish settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim to the city.

‘If President Obama decides to go ahead with this, then he can kiss all his projects in the Arab world goodbye,’ Erekat said, warning of the impact on Arab public opinion.

‘This behaviour is not about peace making. This behaviour is about dictation,’ he said of the Israeli construction plans, warning that if Israel went ahead with such unilateral measures ‘they are destroying the last hopes for Palestinian moderates.’

Erekat urged the Obama government to pressure the new Israeli government of hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to openly accept a two-state solution to the conflict, but he welcomed statements by US officials who called this ‘the only solution’ and a ‘national’ US interest.

‘I think for the first time the US has tied the two-state solution to its national interest. It’s no longer for the good of the region. It’s for their own good. And I think that is new,’ he said.