U.S. expected to back Israeli settlement
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| Wed, 04-14-2004 - 11:27am |
U.S. expected to back Israeli settlement plan
Sharon to get Bush endorsement on keeping some West Bank land
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
THE NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON -- President Bush is planning to issue a declaration today that his aides say will recognize Israel's right to retain some Jewish settlements in the West Bank when its boundaries are negotiated with the Palestinians.
The declaration, to be made when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel visits the White House, would represent a subtle but substantial shift in U.S. policy, which has viewed the settlements as obstacles to peace and asserted that final borders must be arrived at through negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Administration officials also said that Bush would assert that Palestinian refugees from families that formerly resided in what is now Israel should live in a future Palestinian state to be created on the West Bank and Gaza Strip rather than in the Israeli lands they continue to claim.
The officials said that the declarations -- planned for today as part of an elaborately planned visit by Sharon -- are a recognition of reality and similar to peace proposals put forward in private in 2000 by President Clinton.
They appear to fall short of what Sharon had been seeking -- an acceptance of five specific settlement blocs and an outright rejection of the Palestinian "right of return" to Israel.
The exact language and form of the assurances, and whether they are to be made public right away, were being discussed last night. An Israeli official said that aides to Sharon were also studying the language before Sharon's visit.
Bush's assurances could be part of a letter, or a preamble to a letter, or simply a statement from the president, an administration official said. The statement would be that Israel's future borders would have to recognize "demographic realities" since 1967.
That language, officials said, was code for at least some settlements in the West Bank, where Jewish settlers number some 230,000.
The language that would implicitly reject the complete Palestinian "right of return" would be similarly opaque, according to administration officials, in that it would simply reiterate Israel's identity as a Jewish state and suggest that Palestinians should move, in a final settlement, to their own state rather than Israel.
By offering such limited concessions to Sharon, the administration seemed to be hoping not to alienate the Palestinians, who have rejected Sharon's plan to keep some settlements.
The Israeli leader arrived in Washington yesterday morning and spent the day huddled with aides. He met late yesterday with Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser.
"The United States is prepared to adopt some kind of language recognizing the demographic realities that have occurred since 1967," said an administration official, referring to settlements outside the boundaries of Israel before it captured the West Bank and Gaza in a war with neighboring Arab countries.
Administration officials said that, by giving these two endorsements of longstanding Israeli objectives, Bush and his aides were hoping to give Sharon political support for his plan to pull Israeli forces and settlers from Gaza and small parts of the West Bank.
Sharon announced his intention to withdraw from these areas in December, raising a storm of protest among his most conservative supporters in his own Likud governing party. In response, the Israeli leader has scheduled a nationwide referendum among party members to get backing for his plan.
Israeli officials say Sharon wants to breaks dramatically from his own views since at least the 1970s, when he served as a Cabinet minister and personally fathered the idea of populating Gaza and the West Bank with Jewish settlements as a way to enhance Israel's security.
Palestinians have seen the settlements as a land grab and long demanded their complete dismantlement as part of any peace accord with Israel.
In Sharon's eyes, according to his aides, the unilateral withdrawal of Israeli forces and settlements from even a small part of these areas has emerged as the only alternative because of the failure of Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian leaders to guarantee Israel's security needs.
Sharon is known to feel that the withdrawal is a substitute for the faltering negotiations over the past two years under the so-called "road map" pressed by the Bush administration in concert with the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.
Before endorsing Sharon's withdrawals, the United States has managed to get Israel to say that the pullout should not be seen as a substitute for the "road map" but only as a "parking place" while Israel waits for a suitable negotiating partner to emerge on the Palestinian side.
But as Sharon's visit approached, the administration has sounded increasingly supportive of his plan.
The Bush administration, while endorsing the Sharon withdrawal plan in principle, has spent recent weeks trying to assure itself that Egypt and Jordan would help prevent the emergence of Hamas or other Palestinian radicals in Gaza.
Finally, the administration wants Israel's commitment that it will not walk away from the idea of negotiating eventually with Palestinians to achieve a Palestinian state, as Arabs and Europeans especially fear.
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EXCLUSIVE CLUB OF THEIR VICTIMHOOD! Is this how you describe the fact that both the US and Israel have had thousands of our INNOCENT men, women, and children MURDERED while going about their everyday lives????
And I love the way you highlight the Palestinians "this is our land" argument in blue - no mention to the fact that THEY ARE TERRORISTS. Once they started expressing their dissatisfaction by using TERROR their "side" lost all its impact to most rational people. It's shocking to me how the press acts as if their tactics are normal and understandable.
Then this blue qutote: "Blair gave no hint of bitterness in the Rose Garden press conference on Friday, but considering the risks he has taken to support America since 9/11, it was astonishingly ungracious of Bush to keep him out of these negotiations. The 'Road Map' and the promise of multilateral action in Palestine and the West Bank were, after all, the only real concession that Blair won in exchange for British help in Iraq. Yet before he had even touched down in America, the deal was done. Bush's undertaking to his 'friend' had been chucked away like a motto in Christmas cracker."
Perhaps Blair gave no hint of bitterness because he wasn't bitter? How does this reporter know that Bush didn't talk to him ahead of time? He is speculating here.
And this quote, "American foreign policy consists entirely of self-interest, never more so than in an election year when a first-term President is pursuing an extra couple of per cent of Jewish votes in Florida and Ohio. For this, the President attempts to put the world's most serious problem into storage, leaving the destiny of people hanging in the air and the world open-mouthed at the nakedness of his motives."
This is ridiculous. There are clearly more anti-semites than jews here. To speculate that he is doing this for votes is frankly silly.
This quote, "The Prime Minister has argued that the Sharon plan is, in effect, stage one of the 'Road Map' and that it may contain an opportunity for progress, but the signs are not hopeful for the simple reason that it dismisses Security Council resolution 242 which demands an Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 borders. Drafted by the British, 242 is the central pillar of the Palestinian case and to have it dismissed by the Americans and Israelis will add to their rage and sense of injustice."<
What about the Israelis rage and sense of injustice at the mercilous acts of terror inflicted upon them at the hands of the Palestinians??? Does this reported actually believe that they are justified???? The Prime Minister has argued that the Sharon plan is, in effect, stage one of the 'Road Map" and that it may contain an opportunity for progress. That alone tells me the Prime Minister knows more about what is going on behind the scenes than this reported does. I doubt that the reported is included in the national security meetings.
This post is getting too long. I think this op-ed is highly emotionally charged with nonsense and Bush-loathing. In my opinion, the man is an idiot.
The why, has many reasons, and no need to debate here who is at fault, and end up doing the same ole pointing fingers and blame the other guy, while people are dying everyday.
I guess it seems like every generation must learn first hand what real war is about.
The true misery and wholesale death that each side will have to suffer and then and only then will they truely tire of war and truely want peace?
>"I guess it seems like every generation must learn first hand what real war is about.
The true misery and wholesale death that each side will have to suffer and then and only then will they truly tire of war and truly want peace? "<
It's said we're taught
While I don't agree with all of Isreal's actions lately, I really find it hard to feel too sympathetic of the Palestinians demanding "their" land back from Isreal they lost in a war decades ago.
James
janderson_ny@yahoo.com
CL Ask A Guy
It's a no win discussion. I can sympathize with both sides.
But was it Israel's land in the first place?
Now, say today that they decided that they were so angry about it that they were willing to mass murder innocent men, women, and children in this country to express their outrage. How do you think it would be reasonable to react to this?
Should we say, "Wow, now I understand how angry they are about this, we should renegotiate". Or would it be more reasonable to say, "Terrorism is always wrong. Murder is always wrong. We take a stand against terrorism, and by these heinous acts you have invalidated your own argument."
I think the stand against terrorism approach is more reasonable. Many do not, obviously.
Now, say today that they decided that they were so angry about it that they were willing to mass murder innocent men, women, and children in this country to express their outrage. How do you think it would be reasonable to react to this?
Should we say, "Wow, now I understand how angry they are about this, we should renegotiate". Or would it be more reasonable to say, "Terrorism is always wrong. Murder is always wrong. We take a stand against terrorism, and by these heinous acts you have invalidated your own argument."
I think the stand against terrorism approach is more reasonable. Many do not, obviously.>>
1. My suggestion is that we should compensate Native Americans for all treaties broken and injustices done to them. We could take the $4 billion per year that we give to Israel and give it to our Native peoples right here in America.
2. When faced with terrorism, the terrorists must be controlled or eliminated and the moderates must be fairly negotiated with. Israel cultivated the Hamas terrorists decades ago to compete with the moderates, and now the terrorists are out of hand. So Israel has committed extralegal executions of moderates, militants and terrorists alike. They have also killed many hundreds of innocent civilians and caused millions more to suffer unjustly through an INTENTIONAL system of collective punishment.
3. The Israelis are keeping the West Bank in a perpetual state of military occupation. The Israelis are therefore responsible to provide stability, provision and human rights for the people they have chosen to rule.
Instead, the Israelis have shown themselves to be interested in only one thing: the continued colonization of the West Bank and the domination of the Palestinians who live there. These have been the stated goals of prominent Zionists all along. The idea that Israelis would be willing to give up the West Bank for peace is a calculated lie that the Israelis have foisted on the world for decades. The rest of the world has finally figured that out. Now they are waiting for Americans to see the light.
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