World - OneWorld.net
Bush Pressed to Oppose Israeli Settlement Expansion
Date: Thu, Aug 05, 2004
Jim Lobe, OneWorld US
WASHINGTON, D.C., Aug 5 (OneWorld) - In the wake of reports that Israel is planning to build 600 new housing units in the largest Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, U.S. President George W. Bush (news - web sites) is being pressed to remind Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) that the U.S.-backed Road Map requires a freeze on the expansion of all Israeli settlements.
On Wednesday, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli denounced plans to build more housing at Maale Adoumim, a settlement of about 28,000 Jewish residents close to Jerusalem, insisting that Washington "look(s) forward to Israel abiding by (its commitment) to freeze settlement activity and sticking by the Road Map."
In addition, a prominent U.S. Jewish group, Americans for Peace Now (APN), called on Bush to underscore the State Department to weigh in personally with Sharon to make clear that his administration "expects Israel to meet its freely-taken commitments."
"Adherence to these commitments supports not only Israel's own very real security and demographic concerns," the group's leaders wrote in a letter sent to Bush Wednesday, "but is also a measure of both the integrity of Prime Minister Sharon's stated rationale for the security barrier, and of the sincerity of his publicly articulated personal commitment to your vision of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side, with peace and security."
Both the State Department and the APN come amid reports that the administration is deeply split over how to react to Sharon's failure to evacuate dozens of illegal outposts that he had pledged to dismantle earlier in the year and to new plans by government to build a new "Russian-immigrants-only" settlement in the Jordan Valley, and plant some 72,000 olive trees in the West Bank for the exclusive use of Israeli settlers.
These new initiatives come in the wake of a report released last month by Israel's 'Peace Now' that the government continued to expand both the area controlled by the settlements and the number of apartments being built on them since March, including in the Gaza Strip (news - web sites) from which Sharon has proposed evacuating all settlers as part of a unilateral withdrawal plan tentatively approved by the White House.
They also come amid renewed concern about the impact of U.S. support for Sharon on public opinion in the Arab world in the wake of the Iraq (news - web sites) war. Last month, the bipartisan 9/11 Commission noted in its report that the rise of Islamic terrorism was inextricably linked to policies pursued by Israel.
"Right or wrong, it is simply a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American actions in Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world," the report concluded. "Neither Israel nor the new Iraq will be safer if world-wide Islamic terrorism grows stronger," it added, noting that it had determined that several top al Qaeda operatives, including the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, were motivated in major part by rage over Israel's occupation of the Palestinians and Washington's support for Israel.
"American's policy choices have consequences," the report stated.
Sharon's recent moves have drawn strong protests from the Palestinian Authority (news - web sites) (PA) and quiet but urgent prodding by Washington's Road Map partners -- the European Union (news - web sites), the United Nations (news - web sites), and Russia - for Bush to take a stronger position with Sharon in support of the plan.
The administration is reportedly split along familiar lines, with the State Department lobbying for a strong response and Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) and hardliners in the Pentagon (news - web sites) and in the White House urging a more conciliatory approach to the Israeli leader.
With Bush in the middle of his reelection campaign, many observers here believe that he will be very reluctant to confront Sharon now both because it may provoke disaffection from leaders of the Christian Right who oppose the Road Map and believe that Israel has the right to settle the West Bank and alienate many Jewish voters who normally favor Democrats but who have been favorably impressed by Bush's strong support for Israel during the Palestinian intifada. Republicans have been hoping that they could get as much as 35 percent of the Jewish vote - almost double Bush's performance in 2000 - and thus tilt the election in his favor in several key battleground states, such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Jersey, with relatively large Jewish populations.
Bush's Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), has in recent months aligned his own positions more closely with those of both Bush and Sharon, but he has also called for the U.S. to take a much more-active role in getting Israelis and Palestinians to resume the peace process and ensure that neither party deviate from the Road Map. Early in his presidential campaign, he said he would appoint a prominent U.S. figure, perhaps even a former president or secretary of state, as a special envoy.
In their letter, APN Chair Luis Lainier and Executive Director Debra DeLee wrote that nothing less than Bush's credibility was at stake in persuading Sharon to comply with the Road Map.
Noting Sharon's recent moves that violate the letter of the plan, the two officials warned that "the seriousness of your Administration's commitment to the (Gaza) disengagement plan and the Road Map can be called into question if you accept such a blatantly dishonest effort to circumvent Israel's obligations. Your Administration correctly insists on the Palestinian Authority's fulfillments of its commitments to fight terrorism and to institute credible political, security, and economic reforms. You should do no less with Israeli obligations."
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