United States President George W Bush swept aside decades of diplomatic tradition in the Middle East this week, saying it was ”unrealistic” to expect a full Israeli withdrawal from lands occupied during the 1967 war, or the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
At a joint White House press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Bush gave his blessing for a plan to dismantle Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, while retaining Israeli control over substantial sections of the West Bank.
The full details of the accord were expected in an exchange of letters between the two men. ”These are historic and courageous actions,” Bush said about the Gaza withdrawal plan. ”If all parties choose to embrace this moment, they can open the door to progress and put an end to one of the world’s longest-running conflicts.”
Bush went on to reaffirm the US’s support for the security of Israel in the global war on terror, and to express hope that the measures unveiled on Wednesday would ”open the door to progress to a peaceful, viable Palestinian state”.
However, the gesture to the Palestinians was largely overwhelmed by a strategy that appeared to go further even than Sharon had dared hope.
In his statements Bush appears to have distanced his administration from the principles that have guided diplomacy in the Middle East for decades. These are the idea that the Palestinians and Israelis should arrive at a negotiated settlement — first promoted by his father in the Madrid accords of 1991 — and that when a final settlement emerges Israel will broadly adhere to United Nations resolutions and withdraw to its pre-1967 borders.
Bush said the eventual drawing of the borders of an Israeli and Palestinian state would await final status negotiations. But he indicated a new reality, saying: ”In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centres, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”
In effect, he gave the US’s sanction to the Jewish settlement blocks that have been built throughout the West Bank since the 1967 war, and which, traditionally, were described by the State Department as ”obstacles to peace”.
Bush also dismissed one of the sacred tenets of the Palestinians — the right of return of refugees to what is now Israel — saying they should be resettled in a future Palestinian state. ”It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state and the settling of Palestinian refugees there rather than in Israel.”
The twin moves are almost certain to cause widespread outrage in the Arab world, which has long accused Bush of neglecting the US’s role as an honest broker in the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. They could also reverberate on the Pentagon’s attempts to put down the insurrection in Iraq. — Â