Bush endorcement of Israeli Settlements

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Qurei denounces Bush's comment on settlements[/size]
www.chinaview.cn 2005-04-12 20:27:28

RAMALLAH, April 12 (Xinhuanet) -- Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei on Tuesday denounced US President George W. Bush's comment on Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Speaking to reporters, Qurei said the US administration speaks about a Palestinian state but has failed to define what a state means exactly.

"Doesn't a state mean security, border, stability and non-existence of settlements?" Qurei said.

"President Bush's remarks about Israel's right to maintain Jewish settlements do not serve the peace process or lead to a just settlement," he said.

He urged the US administration and the Arab world to consider Jerusalem as a red line and forbid the expansion of settlements around it.

"We are doing what we have to do in terms of reforms and self-rehabilitation, while Israel is keeping up its policy of killing, incursion and settlement expansion. It is Israel that should be asked to halt violence against Palestinians," he said.

On Monday, Bush urged Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon not to expand a key Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

"I told the prime minister not to undertake any activity that contravenes the roadmap or prejudices final status obligations," Bush told reporters after talks with Sharon at his Texas ranch.

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  <br>'No dispute' with Bush, Israelis insist

The New York Times, Reuters
Wednesday, April 13, 2005

JERUSALEM

Israel on Tuesday sought to play down differences with the United States after President George W. Bush told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon the Jewish state must not expand settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinians urged Sharon to heed Bush's call to support the U.S.-backed peace "road map," though they were also furious with the president for restating his position that Israel could expect to keep some of the land where Palestinians want a state.

Bush told Sharon at his Texas ranch on Monday that he must meet obligations set out in the road map to stop expanding settlements. Sharon made no firm commitments.

The United States "has never agreed to the Israeli settlement enterprise" in the West Bank and Gaza, the Sharon aide Dov Weisglass told Israel's Army Radio on Tuesday. "It does not agree to it now. There is no dispute."

Weisglass said the fact that Bush and Sharon could disagree openly about the point - potentially critical to any future peacemaking - demonstrated the strength of the overall relationship.

"I think it is a test of friendship and not the opposite," Weisglass said from the United States.

Sharon did not back down in the face of U.S. concerns over a plan for 3,500 homes in a narrow corridor between the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim and Jerusalem, although he sought to reassure Bush that no new building there was imminent.

Both sides denied after the meeting that there was any crisis over settlements.

"There isn't even a smidgen of confrontation," Sharon said.
After their meeting Monday at Bush's Texas ranch, the president praised Sharon as a "strong, visionary" leader for having pursued a "courageous initiative" to pull Israeli settlers and security forces out of the Gaza Strip and small portions of the West Bank.

His embrace came on a day when Sharon described the political atmosphere in Israel as akin to civil war because of deep disagreements over the withdrawal plan.

Bush's statement was clearly intended to bolster Sharon as he heads toward a wrenching confrontation this summer with some Jewish settlers and their allies as he moves them, perhaps forcibly, out of Gaza.

Sharon, though, gave no ground on Israel's position that it eventually intends to build new housing to establish an unbroken presence from Jerusalem to the settlement of Maale Adumim, a community of 30,000 people. The result could cut most north-south links between Palestinians in the West Bank and make it extremely difficult for Palestinians to gain access to East Jerusalem, which they hope to make the capital of their eventual state.

Sharon said it might be many years before any construction took place, but he said Israelis "are very much interested" in achieving "contiguity between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem."

"Israel has obligations under the road map," Bush said, however, speaking to reporters with Sharon at his side. "The road map clearly says no expansion of settlements."

Both the Americans and the Israelis seemed content to leave any attempt to bridge their differences for another day. They concentrated instead on ensuring that Sharon succeed with his plan for withdrawal from Gaza and that the transition to Palestinian control of Gaza be an opportunity for building trust between Israelis and Palestinians.

"To me, that's where the attention of the world ought to be - on Gaza," Bush said after a meeting with Sharon that included Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "This is the opportunity for the world to help the Palestinians stand up a peaceful society and a hopeful society."

Leading to the Israeli withdrawal and Palestinian elections, Bush is embarking on talks with leaders in the region. Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is expected to visit Bush in Texas in two weeks, and administration officials said they expected the president to see the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, in Washington soon.

Though Sharon spoke of an "atmosphere of a civil war" within Israel over the withdrawal, he said he was confident that the departure of nearly 9,000 settlers from Gaza could be completed "quietly and peacefully."

Bush urged Abbas to take Sharon up on his offer to work together on Israel's disengagement plan, a step the Palestinians have been reluctant to take.

Bush gave Sharon other commitments sought by the Israelis, including a pledge of help [$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$] for economic development in the Negev and Galilee regions, which could help the Israeli government as it confronts the problem of resettling thousands of people. American officials said no specific dollar amounts had been discussed.

Meeting the hopes of the Israeli delegation, Bush also repeated his statement, first made a year ago in a letter to Sharon, that "new realities on the ground make it unrealistic" to think that any final deal with the Palestinians would re-establish the borders established in 1949 and maintained until the 1967 war.

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www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20050412-121934-1031r


....Mr. Sharon appeared determined to press ahead with plans to expand the Ma'aleh Adumim settlement by 3,500 homes.

    "Ma'aleh Adumim is one of the blocs of Jewish population, and our position is that they should be part of Israel," Mr. Sharon said. "It will be part of Israel."

    He added: "We are very much interested that [there] will be contiguity between Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem."

    Mr. Sharon, who riled the Bush administration last month by announcing plans for the expansion, was asked yesterday whether he was disappointed by the president's opposition.

    "No, I'm not disappointed," he said, adding that resolving the issue "might take many years. And I believe that we will have enough opportunities to come and continue our talks with the United States."

    Mr. Bush said settlement expansion is barred by the internationally devised "road map" for a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.

    "The road map clearly says no expansion of settlements," he said. "I told the prime minister of my concern that Israel not undertake any activity that contravenes road map obligations."

    Although Mr. Sharon also expressed his commitment to the road map, his interpretation of the document is apparently at odds with the president's.

    "Both of us are committed to the road map, and the road map says -- and elaborates on this issue," Mr. Sharon said.

    Indeed, the road map calls on Israel to freeze "all settlement activity, including natural growth of settlements."

    Palestinians agree with Mr. Bush that this applies to Ma'aleh Adumim. Moreover, the planned expansion would cut off part of the West Bank from East Jerusalem, which the Arabs want as capital of a Palestinian state.

    "I hope that Prime Minister Sharon will adhere to President Bush's call to stop all settlement activities because I believe this is the key to everything; this is the key to success," chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters in the West Bank after the press conference.

    Mr. Sharon's call to expand Ma'aleh Adumim is widely viewed as an effort to placate conservatives in his Likud Party, who are upset about his plan to withdraw all 21 Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip and four of 120 settlements in the West Bank.

    Mr. Sharon's withdrawal plan was hailed by Mr. Bush yesterday.

    "I strongly support his courageous initiative to disengage from Gaza and part of the West Bank," Mr. Bush said. "The prime minister is willing to coordinate the implementation of the disengagement plan with the Palestinians.

    "I urge the Palestinian leadership to accept his offer," he added. "But he's going to withdraw -- coordination or no coordination."

    Mr. Sharon also warned that further progress on the road map is not possible until Palestinians do more to dismantle terrorist operations. He said the "atmosphere of a civil war" lingers in the Middle East, and Mr. Bush said the prime minister's wariness is understandable.

    "Until he sees more progress, he doesn't have confidence," Mr. Bush said. "And I suspect if we were to have a frank discussion about it, the Palestinians would say, 'Well, we don't have confidence in Israel.' "

    After the press conference, Mr. Bush had lunch with Mr. Sharon and discussed Iran's nuclear ambitions. Then the two took a tour of the president's 1,600-acre Prairie Chapel Ranch.

    At one point, the prime minister invited Mr. Bush to his farm in Israel.

    "I would be very glad, Mr. President, to have you as a guest on our farm, not only because we are short of labor," Mr. Sharon said.
    <br>Mr. Bush responded with a laugh: "You're desperate for labor if you're counting on me."
    <br>

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Late Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yasser Arafat was often criticized for “saying one thing in English and another in Arabic” with the clear connotation that the language leaders use both with their own people and to the rest of the world has real significance. What should one connote, then, from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s performance during this week’s press conference in Crawford, Texas? President George W. Bush referred to PA President Mahmoud Abbas four times, on each occasion using his elected title of president. An obstinate Sharon, however, referred to Abbas only as “chairman.” Sharon’s snub harkens back to the Oslo days when Israelis insisted that Arafat be referred to as “rais” or “chairman” (of the Palestine Liberation Organization) rather than “president.” Further, Sharon continues to refer to the West Bank in its biblical terms as “Judea and Samaria.” If language matters, as the Israelis have established that it does, then Sharon’s precise language sends a clear message. Perhaps it is President Abbas who does not have a true partner for peace.

aaiusa.org/countdown/c041505.htm

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Palestinian Legislative Council member, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi spoke at the Palestine Center this week about upcoming Palestinian elections, Sharon’s trip to Crawford, and Israel’s upcoming Gaza withdrawal. Ashrawi criticized the unilateral nature of the withdrawal as a “negation” of Palestinians. “Disengagement,” she said, “will get rid of Sharon’s security threat from Gaza but at the same time Gaza will become a huge prison thanks to Israeli control over aid, borders, and water space…Gaza is not an independent state.”<br>

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New York Times reports :

April 19, 2005

Israel, on Its Own, Is Shaping the Borders of the West Bank

By STEVEN ERLANGER

MAALE ADUMIM, West Bank, April 16 -....

Israel's intentions to keep building next to this suburb about three miles from Jerusalem have set off a small furor with the Bush administration, which is putting pressure on Israel to keep a commitment to freeze settlement growth.

But the construction and planning at Maale Adumim and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to pull 9,000 Israeli settlers out of the Gaza Strip this summer are only parts of a far larger and more complex transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian landscape, and of Mr. Sharon's policies themselves.

In effect, Israel under Mr. Sharon is unilaterally moving to define its future borders with a Palestinian state - with the scheduled withdrawal from Gaza and from four small settlements in the northern West Bank, with the "thickening" of settlements near Jerusalem and the Israeli border, and with a new route for the Israeli separation barrier approved by the cabinet on Feb. 20.

Palestinians are furious that Israel is moving without waiting for negotiations. But the likely impact of the provisional new border on Palestinian life is, perhaps surprisingly, smaller than generally assumed, and it would leave about a quarter of Israeli settlers on the Palestinian side.

Pressed by the Israeli Supreme Court and the United States, Mr. Sharon has pulled the separation barrier much closer than it had been to Israel's 1967 boundaries, which were the armistice lines of the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war and became known as the green line.

Even including the three major Israeli settlement blocs of Maale Adumim, Ariel further north and Gush Etzion in the south, the land between the green line and the barrier is 8 percent of the West Bank - close to the 5 percent in the proposal that President Clinton was putting forward in 2000, at the end of his negotiations with the Palestinians and the Israelis.

And even that provisional, unilateral 8 percent, before final-status negotiations begin, means that 99.5 percent of Palestinians would live outside the barrier, in 92 percent of the West Bank, with 74 percent of Israeli settlers inside it.

"The real point is being lost in the spat over Maale Adumim," said David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. [This is an Israeli front org] "The contours of the debate over the West Bank have shifted under our eyes.

"People associate Sharon with being Mr. Settlement and react with a certain churlishness, saying he's trying to trade Gaza for the West Bank. But the real story is how Mr. Settlement, who wanted to build on 100 percent of the West Bank, is down to 8 percent. If we're talking about Maale Adumim, it means that Sharon sees this as the main battleground, not Elon Moreh or the Jordan Valley."

Palestinians do not see that as a victory. They argue that all Israeli settlements beyond the green line are illegal. They reject the annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967 and say that the 8 percent of the West Bank inside the barrier is among the best land for housing and agriculture. Unilateralism, they say, is no substitute for negotiations.

Saeb Erekat, the veteran Palestinian negotiator, said, "If this project is carried out, it will mean shutting the door for negotiations and peace and putting more Palestinians effectively into prison."

Eight percent is half of what the figure was last summer, before the Israeli Supreme Court told the government to move the barrier closer to the green line. The new route has sharply reduced the number of Palestinians caught inside the barrier: fewer than 10,000 of the two million Palestinians in the West Bank.

Those figures do not include East Jerusalem, which contains about 175,000 Israelis and about 195,000 Palestinians.

About 85,000 Palestinians, the Defense Ministry says, live with Israeli identity cards on the Israeli side of the barrier. The Palestinian population is growing by about 3.3 percent annually, and the Israeli population by less than 1 percent.

Thousands more Palestinians live in areas like Qalqilya, which are no longer formally behind the barrier, but where they must cross through gates that can be sealed quickly.

Still, Israelis argue, the hardships of the barrier are now less severe and affect fewer Palestinians than before. Israeli officials point out that even the final proposal being considered at the end of Mr. Clinton's negotiations awarded some West Bank land to Israel, with land transfers to the Palestinians to make up the difference. And the Palestinians, in every negotiation so far, have seemed ready to cede Maale Adumim to the Israelis for other land.

Ariel may be a different matter, given how far it sticks out into the West Bank. But even [sic] with Ariel, the Israeli government has agreed with Washington not to fully enclose the area, which would trap thousands of Palestinians in enclaves. Instead it uses local fences around settlements and increased army patrols.

Within the new route of the barrier but outside the green line are some 177,000 Israelis living mostly in these large settlement blocs - about 74 percent of Israeli settlers. The other 26 percent, about 63,000, live in the West Bank beyond the barrier.

That 26 percent, some in isolated, heavily guarded settlements or in small outposts, are likely to find themselves stranded in an independent Palestine or having to move, for it is highly unlikely that in any negotiation this notional Israeli border, along the barrier's route, will move farther into the West Bank.

Mr. Sharon's barrier has spelled out the future for those settlers, but removing them could make the coming Gaza evacuation seem like a walk in the park, especially when talking about fiercely ideological settlements like Ofra and Beit El.

Israel argues that the barrier is not a border but merely a temporary security measure that can be moved or removed in accordance with negotiations. But Israel is building inside the new route - at Maale Adumim, for example - as if it will be a border, or close to one.

Mr. Makovsky has analyzed [sic] the changing route of the barrier and done population estimates, village by village, with census figures and a C.I.A. projection of annual population growth rates. "Clinton was down to 5 percent of the West Bank, and here you are down to 8 percent before final-status negotiations," Mr. Makovsky said. "It has to be modified and agreed upon by the parties, but before our eyes we see the rough shape of a two-state solution."

While the politicians argue, nothing stops.

Settlement construction is continuing on the West Bank, though more slowly than was the case two years ago, in apparent violation of Mr. Sharon's commitment in the first stage of the road map to freeze settlement growth. Mr. Sharon says the road map is not yet in force because the Palestinians have not met their own first-stage obligation to dismantle terrorist organizations. The population of West Bank settlements is increasing by about 5.6 percent a year.

Nor has Mr. Sharon yet kept his promise to Mr. Bush to dismantle illegal settlement outposts built after March 2001 - at least 24 of the 105 illegal outposts disclosed in an Israeli study.

In the meantime, Mr. Sharon and Washington continue negotiating what a freeze means, with Israel being pushed to define where existing construction stops within large settlement areas like Maale Adumim, which was established in 1975. Israeli officials say Washington will allow construction within existing built-up areas but not outside them.

Even that position, which American officials will not publicly confirm, seem to violate Israel's promises under the road map to freeze settlement growth after March 2001, including natural growth.

That is why Mr. Bush was so upset, and publicly so, about the announcement that Israel was planning 3,500 new units in a 4.6-square-mile area known as E1, adjacent to Maale Adumim, enough to house 14,000 new settlers.

The mayor of Maale Adumim, Benny Kashriel, says the community of 32,000, with its flowerbeds and shopping mall, is widely accepted as part of Israel and will stay that way, so that new construction is necessary to survive. "We're building in Maale Adumim territory," he said. "We're not expanding at all."

Large municipal boundaries around smaller communities are a standard Israeli device, critics say, to make it seem that new settlement construction is merely "thickening" existing settlements. The official municipal boundaries of Maale Adumim are huge, larger than Tel Aviv's, and stretch nearly to Jericho. The settlement is built up on only about 15 percent of its official area.

Given the proximity to Jerusalem, the passions on both sides are intense. Israelis want E1 to provide contiguity of Jewish settlement around Jerusalem, while Palestinians want it to ensure contiguity of Palestinian settlement between East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Mr. Sharon says the plan will go ahead, even if not immediately. "It is the Israeli position," he said, standing next to Mr. Bush last week, "that the major Israeli population centers will remain in Israel's hands under any future final-status agreement, with all related consequences."

For Dror Etkes of Peace Now, there is no quick or painless solution. "Israeli society is going through a very hard period and has to learn to redefine itself after 40 years as a non-occupying country," he said. "This is not going to end easily."