Israel - Clinton and Trump Must Honour Bush-Congress Commitments

[Published 4 August 2016]


Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have yet to signal their readiness to honour the commitments made by President Bush in his letter dated 14 April 2004 to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Bush’s letter — overwhelmingly endorsed by the House of Representatives 407-9 on 23 June 2004 and the Senate 95-3 the next day — supported Israel’s proposed unilateral disengagement from Gaza and four settlements in the West Bank.

Bush further reassured Israel that in final status negotiations with the Palestinian Authority America would support Israel:

1. not returning to the 1949 armistice lines

2. demanding recognition as the Jewish state

3. refusing Palestinian Arab refugees being resettled in Israel

Bush’s assurances were absolutely crucial to Israel resuming negotiations with the Palestinian Authority — Israel’s then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert telling world leaders gathered with Bush at Annapolis on 27 November 2007:

“The negotiations will be based on previous agreements between us, UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the Roadmap and the April 14th 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.”

Former Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz revealed in an editorial that he raised the letter during Bush’s meeting with a group of Israeli journalists at the White House in May 2008:

“Bush did not at first realize that I was referring to the 2004 letter. [National Security Adviser] Hadley, who was also in the Oval Office, had to prompt him. “Okay, the letters,” the president then said, remembering.”

Bush’s apparent memory lapse could not be claimed by his successor President Obama who set out to deliberately circumvent Bush’s commitment supporting Israel’s position on territorial withdrawal.

Obama’s attack dog was Hillary Clinton — then Secretary of State - who claimed on 17 June 2009 that the letter:

“did not become part of the official position of the United States government.”

Elliott Abrams — Middle East Affairs point-man at the National Security Council from 2001 to 2009 — had no qualms dismissing Clinton’s contention — stating in July 2009:

“Not only were there agreements, but the prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching political reorientation—the dissolution of his government, the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement and military position in Gaza, and the removal of four small settlements in the West Bank. This was the first time Israel had ever removed settlements outside the context of a peace treaty, and it was a major step”.

Clinton made Obama’s sinister intentions clearer on 25 November 2009:

“We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.”

Bush’s letter had never mentioned “agreed swaps” — signalling abandonment of the Bush-Congress commitments if Obama himself confirmed Clinton’s statements.

Eighteen months later that confirmation eventuated - Obama declaring on 19 May 2011:

“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

Michael Oren - Israel’s former Ambassador to Washington between 2009 and 2013 — has called for the Bush letter to be resuscitated. Clinton can do this by distancing herself from Obama’s attempt to trash it.

Trump’s assertion that:

“your friends need to know that you will stick by the agreements that you have with them”

is meaningless unless Trump pledges to unconditionally honour those Bush-Congress commitments.

Halting America’s rapidly declining trustworthiness and diplomatic integrity demands Clinton and Trump so act.

Clinton Silent On Honouring Bush-Congress Commitments To Israel

[Published 20 March 2016]


Marco Rubio’s withdrawal from the Presidential race this week will not relieve Hillary Clinton from affirming or disavowing the following pledge made by Rubio during his failed campaign:

“I will revive the common-sense understandings reached in the 2004 Bush-Sharon letter and build on them to help ensure Israel has defensible borders,”

The terms of Bush’s letter - dated 14 April 2004 - were overwhelmingly endorsed by the House of Representatives 407-9 on 23 June 2004 and the Senate 95-3 on 24 June 2004.

The letter backed Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza and promised to support Israel’s following positions in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority over the previous 11 years:

1. Israel would not cede its claims to all of the territory captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War

2. Millions of Palestinian Arabs would not be resettled in Israel and

3. Israel must be recognised as the state of the Jewish people.

Israel’s insistence on these conditions had been major stumbling blocks in the PLO rejecting Israel’s offer to withdraw from more than 90% of the West Bank during negotiations brokered by President Bill Clinton in 2000/2001.

The Bush Congress-endorsed letter had put America squarely in Israel’s corner.

Elliott Abrams — Middle East Affairs point-man at the National Security Council from 2001 to 2009 — had no qualms about the significance of the Bush letter — when stating in July 2009:

“Not only were there agreements, but the prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching political reorientation — the dissolution of his government, the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement and military position in Gaza, and the removal of four small settlements in the West Bank. This was the first time Israel had ever removed settlements outside the context of a peace treaty, and it was a major step”.

President Obama however sought to change the goal posts laid down in the Bush letter with this statement on 19 May 2011:

“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

Glenn Kessler pointed out at the time:

“Indeed, Israelis and Palestinians have held several intensive negotiations that involved swapping lands along the Arab-Israeli dividing line that existed before the 1967 war - technically known as the Green Line, or the boundaries established by the 1949 Armistice agreements. (Click here for a visual description of the swaps discussed between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008.)

So, in many ways, it is not news that the eventual borders of a Palestinian state would be based on land swaps from the 1967 dividing line. But it makes a difference when the president of the United States says it, particularly in a carefully staged speech at the State Department. This then is not an off-the-cuff remark, but a carefully considered statement of U.S. policy.”

Given the chaos in Syria since Obama’s statement, the birth of Islamic State in 2014 and the continuing unstable political and security situations in Gaza and the West Bank— mutually agreed land swaps as a concept have become just another missed opportunity whose time has expired.

Michael Oren—Israel’s Ambassador to Washington between 2009 and 2013 was moved to make the following call in January 2015:

".. it’s time to revive the Bush-Sharon letter and act according to it.”

Will Clinton so act — if elected America’s 17th Democratic President — to honour a former Republican President’s commitments to one of America’s longstanding allies that go far beyond personal partisan politics?

Her answer is eagerly awaited.