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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International law protects inhabitants against having their land taken by conquering armies/peoples.
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The Palestinians have no army or government, and have never had any capability of starting a war or invading a country. Please explain what you are talking about.
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Where is the Palestinians' home? They come from historic Palestine, so sending them "home" would mean sending them to either Israel or the West Bank. So are you claiming the Palestinians, with no known army, invaded their "home", got their "butts kicked", and were sent home crying to their "home"?
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Of course, this statement is as incomprehensible as the rest of your post. International law prevents occupying armies from seizing and resettling land from the inhabitants. The Israelis have seized and resettled West Bank land and Israel proper for decades via lies, theft and defiance of the Geneva Convention. The international community has been unable to prevent Israel from doing so, and has been unable, due to US influence, to punish Israel for its violations.
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Palestine is a region, not a country. The people of Palestine do not have their own army, and cannot wage war.
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People without an army cannot wipe out anyone.
Israel didn't cultivate terrorists. The fanatic Palestenians, out of desperation, or anger, or hatred, or whatever they feel cultivated terrorists. Terrorism is ALWAYS wrong. When the moderates and innocent Palestenians do not publicly denounce these acts of terrorism, that is very revealing to me.
An extremist group of Palestinians invalidated their ability to participate in dialogue with moderates on both sides.
The Palestinians as a people deserve the same human rights and ability to be recognized in dialogue as any other group of human beings on the planet.
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False. Israel was founded on a number of well known terrorist acts by Jewish terrorists, some of whom went on to become prime ministers of the Israeli state.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_terrorism
Zionists have committed terrorist acts such as sending letter bombs, parcel bombs, placing grenades in cafes, bombing a hotel full of civilians, bombing a ship full of refugees, assassinating an ambassador famous for saving Jews during the Holocaust, hijacking a civilian airliner and holding its passengers hostage, using time-delayed bombs to blow up crowded Palestinian marketplaces, and poisoning water sources with typhus and dysentery to sicken innocent civilians.
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The Likud promoted Hamas early on as a means of breaking the popular power of Arafat.
http://www.why-war.com/news/2002/06/04/sharonli.html
"In the past quarter century, Sharon and his Likud government party midwifed the birth of Hamas and coddled the rise of Islamic extremists through policies that were more concerned with undermining the peace process."
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This, at least, is an accurate statement.
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Brilliant idea. We'll hold 3.5 million civilians hostage until they parrot the right words for you.
Also, when the Israeli army overreaches there are loud and angry cries denouncing these acts by Israeli people and clergy. The fact that the leadership and clergy and Palestenian people not only DO NOT DENOUNCE terrorism, it is something that is honored. This is very illuminating to me...
Edited 4/26/2004 2:51 pm ET ET by iminnie833
I haven't changed how I feel about this. Terrorism is always wrong. The Palestenian "moderates" do not denounce terrorism. As long as they think this is a valid way to express their dissatisfaction I feel like they have invalidated their arguments.
And, I don't want to hold anybody hostage until they "parrot the right words for me". The very fact that they don't do it automatically speaks volumns. If the mainstream Palestenians didn't stand for it, condemned it, like the mainstream Israeli's do, perhaps it would be easier to see their pov.
Edited 4/26/2004 3:03 pm ET ET by iminnie833
Every day terrorists attacks to murder innocents are stopped by the IDF.
You're splitting hairs here, and you're not going to pull it off.
Your original statement was that Israel did not nurture terrorists. I posted information proving that Israel both cultivated both Jewish terrorists, and Hamas in the early days.
I posted a long list of acts of terrorism that occurred both as acts of Zionist terror gangs as well as acts of the Israeli government and army. If you want me to, I can post more information about terrorism or attempted terrorism committed by the Mossad and the Israeli army.
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Except, apparently, when committed by Jews.
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The Palestinians are not objects of your will, Puppetmaster. I'm sure you would like them to prostrate themselves and lick the floor to prove how sorry they are for terrorist acts they did not commit, as Palestinians continue to die in droves from IDF attacks. But this does not look like its going to happen.
You seem to think that a brutal military occupation that has left thousands of people malnourished and suffering is justified because the Palestinian moderates are not doing enough carping and bowing to Zionists. In light of the attitudes I have seen amongst pro-Israelis, this no longer surprises me. It never ceases to disappoint me, though.
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The mainstream Israelis condemn terrorism? Not when the terrorists are Jewish, they don't!
1. They have named streets in Israel after Irgun and Stern gang terrorists:
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0151/vest.php
"There are streets named after the assassins of Moyne and Bernadotte. They are historical figures not disavowed by the rhetoric of the state of Israel, nor is there any reflection on the fact that two terrorist leaders later became distinguished leaders of the republic," Ibish says. "And now people are saying that Arafat must have his Altalena." Ibish adds that Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, "never moved against the Irgun and the Stern Gang until after the state was established and secured, which is definitely not true in the case of the Palestinian Authority. Essentially, the Israelis are asking the Palestinians to do something they themselves refused to do."
(Bernadotte is the ambassador who saved many Jews during the Holocaust. When he tried to broker a deal that was reasonably fair for the Palestinians, he was assassinated by Jewish terrorists)
2. The Israelis elected two prime ministers, Begin and Shamir, who were terrorists with the Irgun and Stern gangs in the 1940s. Their terrorist activities are well known, including bombings and assassinations of anyone who didn't do things their way.
The mainstream, majority of the Israeli people loudly and instantly condemn any act of atrocity that their own side commits. They will not stand for attrocities to be committed. Not so with the Palestenian people. There is a LOUD SILENCE among them. This is my point. This makes them stand out, imo, among almost any other society. By their silence they are saying that these acts, as long as they are committed against Jews is not attrocious, is acceptable.
And you and I do not agree about the Israeli's "terrorism". I do not believe that military action against the terrorists is terrorism. We have a difference of opinion there, but still, when they go over the line of right and wrong - the mainstream of their culture condemns it - which I think is a more normal reaction.
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