JERUSALEM - As part of the Middle East peace process that is being revived with a strong push from the Bush administration, Shimon Peres, the Israeli President, has proposed a land swap in which the Jewish state would keep about 5% of the West Bank and the Palestinians would get the same amount of land in Israel.

Mr. Peres's plan, which was floated in a lead article in the Haaretz newspaper yesterday, sparked an immediate furor as does almost any mention of who might get what land, one of the most sensitive issues that has prevented Israelis and Palestinians from agreeing to a two-state solution.

The office of Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, issued a statement vehemently denying it had received such suggestions.

Mr. Peres's office said such a proposal had been made, Haaretz reported, but quarreled with a suggestion by the newspaper that some land belonging to Arab-Israelis might be included in the exchange if those owning it approved.

It would not be the first time Israel has put a land swap on the table that would see it give up some of its West Bank settlements while keeping others in three distinct blocs near Jerusalem. However, as with many other issues, Israelis and Palestinians are also deeply divided among themselves about how to proceed.

A foretaste of the potential trouble if Israel tries to evict tens of thousands of settlers from some of the most remote West Bank settlements was on display yesterday in Hebron.

It took nearly 3,000 Israeli soldiers and policemen to evict two Jewish families after Israeli courts ruled last week their presence in a market there was illegal.

Five protesters were arrested and more than a dozen security forces were wounded when they were pelted with flour and debris by the squatters and several hundreds of their supporters.

The scenes were reminiscent of September, 2005, when security forces sometimes encountered stiff resistance when they removed about 10,000 settlers from the Gaza Strip.

Ten Israeli soldiers and two of their squad leaders from a unit of strictly observant Orthodox Jews, who refused to participate in the Hebron evictions on the advice of their rabbis, were sentenced to a month in jail. They also would never be allowed to take part in combat operations.

"Any act of refusal of any stripe does not belong ... in an army like ours. We have no intention of indulging it," Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister, said in a speech to soldiers yesterday in which he also declared only commanders were allowed to give soldiers orders.

Until now the Palestinian position on the land issue has been that Israel must withdraw all 220,000 settlers from the West Bank and about as many Israelis from east Jerusalem, which was lost to Israeli forces during the 1967 Six Day War. The question of who gets what land will be one of the most difficult subjects, if it is discussed at a U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace summit in the fall.

The other controversial subjects are the future of Jerusalem, which both sides claim as their capital, and whether Palestinian refugees who left what became Israel in 1948 should be allowed to return.

© National Post 2007