Palestine - Is Obama Honouring The Bush Pledge?

[Published 5 August 2011]


A report this week [http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=562] claims that President Obama has now decided to honor the terms of a letter given by former President George Bush to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on 14 April 2004.

That letter can best be described as a pledge - given its contents and the circumstances in which it was written by President Bush to Prime Minister Sharon - who had also handed President Bush a letter at the same time setting out Israel’s proposal to unilaterally disengage from Gaza and part of the West Bank.

That fateful decision carried with it enormous risks to Israel’s security and possible trauma for the 8000 Israeli men women and children who were to be evacuated from their homes and businesses in Gaza where many had lived for more than three decades.

Those risks were soon translated into harsh realities as Hamas assumed power in Gaza within a few short years and indiscriminately targeted Israeli population centers with thousands of missiles. Now Hamas is busily engaged in building an arsenal of far more deadly weapons in anticipation of a future showdown with Israel.

Many of those evacuated Israeli civilians indeed experienced matrimonial and psychological breakdowns and financial ruin as a result of the disengagement.

President Bush was well aware of those risks - but appreciated at the same time the opportunity such disengagement would offer to progress his Roadmap when he told Prime Minister Sharon:

“We welcome the disengagement plan you have prepared, under which Israel would withdraw certain military installations and all settlements from Gaza, and withdraw certain military installations and settlements in the West Bank.

These steps described in the plan will mark real progress toward realizing my June 24, 2002 vision, and make a real contribution toward peace. ...The United States appreciates the risks such an undertaking represents. I therefore want to reassure you on several points.“

The reassurances President Bush gave were:

1. The United States would do its utmost to prevent any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan.

2. The United States reiterated its steadfast commitment to Israel’s security, including secure, defensible borders, and to preserve and strengthen Israel’s capability to deter and defend itself, by itself,

3. Israel would retain its right to defend itself against terrorism, including to take actions against terrorist organizations.

4. The United States was strongly committed to Israel’s security and well-being as a Jewish state.

5. It seemed clear that an agreed, just, fair, and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement would need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.

6. As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it was unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations would be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution had reached the same conclusion. It was realistic to expect that any final status agreement would only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.

The Bush letter was overwhelmingly endorsed by the United States House of Representatives and Senate on 23 June 2004 when the following Resolution was passed by a vote of 407-9:

“Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That Congress strongly endorses the principles articulated by President Bush in his letter dated April 14, 2004, to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon which will strengthen the security and well-being of the State of Israel; and supports continuing efforts with others in the international community to build the capacity and will of Palestinian institutions to fight terrorism, dismantle terrorist organizations, and prevent the areas from which Israel has withdrawn from posing a threat to the security of Israel.”

President Obama has been very coy in publicly acknowledging that he intended to honor the Bush Pledge.

In 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said there was no acknowledgment of any such agreement in the official negotiating record between Israel and the Bush administration - asserting .

“There is no memorialization of any informal and oral agreements. If they did occur, which of course people say they did, they did not become part of the official position of the U.S. government,”

Why President Obama should have got his Secretary of State to try and weasel out of honoring the Bush letter was very puzzling. That letter was given to assure Israel of America’s support as it unilaterally withdrew from Gaza and part of the West Bank. It set out clearly and unequivocally America’s position in relation to the outcome it would support in future negotiations under the Roadmap between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Having been overwhelmingly endorsed by the Congress this letter could not be dismissed as some private or secret agreement made at the whim of a President that could be negated by a subsequent President. For better or worse it had become part of American policy that would need to be honored and respected by President Obama.

Ha’aretz journalist Ari Shavit issued a warning about the failure of Obama to honor this letter when he wrote in 2010:

“When it emerges that an incumbent American president is denying a commitment given by a previous American president and adopted by a large majority of the two houses of Congress,Israel will pass from a state of moral inferiority to one of moral superiority.

This is not merely a tactical matter. To make peace with the Palestinians Israel will have to take on itself almost survival-threatening risks. For Israel to take such risks it will need solid American guarantees. If the U.S. tears to shreds its previous guarantees, there is no value to future guarantees it might provide. So the matter of American credibility is fundamental.”

Hopefully the President has now come to the same conclusion.

Quartet Crumbles, Arab League Rumbles, Israel Fumbles

[Published 15-03-2007]

America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - the Quartet - have now apparently decided that their shared vision of creating a second Arab State in former Palestine -in addition to Jordan - is unrealistic and unattainable.

It has taken the Quartet four years of fruitless endeavour to finally understand that this vision has turned into a nightmare, that its' negotiating skills have been found wanting, totally inept and ineffective, and that its' inability to exercise any persuasive leadership or control over the negotiations has made it the laughing stock of the Arab world.

Competent negotiators know that you don't start negotiations unless you can reasonably be assured of a successful outcome. The Quartet has stumbled badly and its' reputation has been shot to pieces.

You would think that in these circumstances the Quartet would understand the need to go back to the drawing board and formulate a new policy that did not have the creation of another Arab State in former Palestine as its' centrepiece.

Instead the Quartet has decided to create a symphony orchestra by joining with the 22 members of the Arab League in pursuing the League's outdated and totally flawed 2002 Peace Initiative - which calls for precisely the same second Arab State to be created in former Palestine.

By what stretch of the imagination does the Quartet believe the Arab Plan will succeed when its' own plan has so spectacularly failed to be implemented in even the smallest detail?

Does the Arab plan have any more desirable features than the Quartet's Plan to enable this new Arab state - the 23rd in the world - to be created?

Definitely not for the following reasons:

(i) It demands the right of return to Israel of all Arabs (and their descendants) who have not lived there for the last 60 years , which even our intrepid Quartet found to be totally unrealistic.

The Quartet's view on this outrageous proposal is set out in the letter George Bush gave to Israel's then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the White House on 14 April 2004 (the Bush Pledge) which explicitly stated:

"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."

(ii) It demands the right of expulsion of 400000 Jews living in the West Bank for the last 40 years - ethnic cleansing at its' cruellest and most primeval level , a gross abuse of international humanitarian law and as racist as you can get.

The Bush Pledge said of this pernicious proposal :

"In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, 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, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities."

(iii) It demands the return of every single inch of the West Bank to Arab rule. No ifs and buts- every single inch.

This makes a mockery of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 which made it clear to the Arabs that more than a few inches of the West Bank would remain in Israel's hands.

Again the Bush Pledge was firm and uncompromising stating:

"As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338."

It is critical to understand that the Arab League Plan is not something that is open to bargaining of the kind one usually indulges in on a visit to an Arab bazaar where the end result usually involves the shopkeeper running down the street after the departing customer, frantically prepared at that stage to do any deal he can conclude.

The Arab leadership has made it crystal clear that its' plan is an "all or nothing proposal".

Israel and the Quartet must somehow think otherwise as both suddenly find something of value in an overture that has been ignored for the last five years.

What could possibly lead them to that conclusion is the real mystery.

What is also crystal clear is that the symphony orchestra will not play a note of this score and that it will be consigned to the dustbin of history like the many plans that have preceded it. Anyone buying tickets to this performance will be bitterly disappointed .

The creation of a second Arab State in former Palestine on the terms demanded by the Arab League is dead in the water.

There is only one piece left to be performed- the division of the West Bank between Jordan and Israel.

Who in the orchestra will have the guts to grab the baton, get on the podium and bring this program to a successful finale?