United States President George Bush urged Israel on Tuesday to resume direct talks with the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, and put on hold plans to withdraw unilaterally from the West Bank.
In his first official visit to Washington, the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, received very little support for immediate movement on his plan to redraw Israel’s borders by annexing the big settlement blocks in the West Bank and abandoning a few smaller outposts. Instead, only days after dismissing Abbas as too weak to be a credible negotiating partner, Olmert found himself at a White House press conference promising to meet the Palestinian leader in the near future.
”I intend to exhaust every possibility to promote peace with the Palestinians according to the road map, and I extend my hand in peace to Mahmoud Abbas,” Olmert said. However, he was still sceptical talks could lead to a settlement.
Both men made a distinction between talks with Abbas and any dealings with Hamas, which the US regards as a terrorist organisation. The distinction was underlined by a vote in the House of Representatives earlier on Tuesday to ban all assistance to the Palestinian Authority, and cut off diplomatic contacts with Hamas.
”Unfortunately, the rise of Hamas … which refuses to recognise Israel’s right to exist and regards terrorism as a legitimate tool, severely undermines the possibility of promoting a genuine peace process,” Olmert told reporters.
He also made clear there is a limit to Israel’s patience. ”We cannot wait indefinitely for the Palestinians to change.”
Despite the US pressure to shelve his withdrawal plans for now, Olmert was buoyed by a display of support by Bush for ”bold ideas”.
Although the president said Washington remains committed to a negotiated final settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, he added: ”These ideas could lead to a two-state solution if a pathway to progress on the road map is not opened in the period ahead.”
Since Olmert’s election last March, the White House has grown increasingly uneasy about his plan for a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank, uncertain about its larger consequences for a region already inflamed by the war in Iraq and a looming nuclear confrontation with Iran.
The US is also concerned about the financial implications for Washington of Olmert’s plan to resettle tens of thousands of Jewish settlers.
So while Olmert was rewarded with rhetorical support on Tuesday, the endorsement from Bush stops far short of a 2004 letter to the leader at the time, Ariel Sharon, in which he appeared ready to allow Israel to retain settlement blocks in the West Bank as ”facts on the ground”.
However, the Israel leader must hope it will be enough for him to demonstrate to an audience at home that he has managed to carry on the strong relationship with Washington forged by Sharon.
Also helpful to his cause will be Bush’s pledge that the US would defend Israel in case of a nuclear threat from Iran.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, told the Israeli press that Hamas would call a long-term ceasefire if Israel withdrew from all the land it occupied in the 1967 war. But the statement, a reiteration of Hamas’s stated policy, falls short of Western demands for the Islamist group to recognise Israel.
In his meeting with Bush, Olmert was also expected to press the US leader over the Iranian nuclear threat, warning that Israel believes Tehran is just months away from making a bomb. The two men were also expected to discuss the violence in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territories. Haniyeh said he would not allow the confrontations to escalate into civil war.
Abbas said a planned ”national dialogue” involving Hamas, Fatah and other groups later this week would resolve factional differences.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces captured a prominent commander of Hamas’s military wing on Tuesday who is blamed for attacks that have killed 78 civilians and soldiers. The army seized Sheikh Ibrahim Hamed (41) in Ramallah after surrounding a building and threatening to bulldoze it if he did not surrender.
The military said he was the most wanted man in the West Bank. ”What made him special was his creativity in finding very complex ways to attack Israelis,” Colonel Amir Abulafiyeh, who oversaw the capture, told Army Radio.
Back story
Olmert says he wants to draw the final borders of Israel by 2010 using the vast concrete and steel barrier under construction through the West Bank and Jerusalem to carve out a frontier.
The plan would require the removal of smaller Jewish settlements in the West Bank that are home to about 60 000 Israelis and fall on what will be the Palestinian side of the barrier.
The barrier route will annex to Israel the three main settlement blocks, which house about 350 000 settlers. That will impose a border that cuts deep into the West Bank, nearly cutting it in half east of Jerusalem, and taking large amounts of territory around the Ariel block in the northern West Bank. — Guardian Unlimited Â