Creating Confusion, Pt. I

In April 2004, President Bush gave a letter to Israel’s Prime Minister Sharon, outlining key points of US policy toward Israel, the Palestinians and the future, including: “The United States reiterates 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, against any threat or possible combination of threats…

In April 2004, President Bush gave a letter to Israel’s Prime Minister Sharon, outlining key points of US policy toward Israel, the Palestinians and the future, including: “The United States reiterates 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, against any threat or possible combination of threats… In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population 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 to changes that reflect these realities.”

Regular readers know we advocate use of the words “1949 armistice lines.” They are geographically the same as the Green Line/67 Line in the West Bank (not so in the Golan). NOT calling it a “border” (as in ’67 Border) substantiates the fact that houses on the east side of the line have the same legal status as houses on the west side, i.e., they are not “illegal.” It strengthens the American and Israeli determination that UN Resolution 242 does not require Israeli withdrawal from all the territory acquired in 1967 and the lines are not the fixed boundary of some presumed Palestinian state-in-waiting.

Fast forward.

In March 2005, Yediot Aharanot reported that US Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer told a group in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, “no such understandings were ever reached” with Washington that Israel would keep large settlement blocks in the West Bank. The New York Times printed Kurtzer’s denial on March 26: “What I tried to explain is exactly what US policy is … And US policy is the support that the president has given for the retention by Israel of major Israeli population centers as an outcome of negotiations.”

Just in case it wasn’t entirely clear, on April 7, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Israel Radio, “We do not appreciate people trying to create confusion where there is no confusion … I understand this is a big issue in Israel but no one should say there’s no agreement between our two governments. That’s wrong. There is; it was reached on April 14 last year and it’s clear.” She added, “While we will not prejudice the outcome of final status negotiations, the changes on the ground, the ‘existing major Israeli population centers’ will have to be taken into account in any final status negotiations.”

After all that, in writing, spread over time and enunciated by the three chief enunciators of American policy, it is hard to understand the furor over President Bush’s words to Abu Mazen in the Rose Garden last week. “Any final status agreement must be reached between the two parties, and changes to the 1949 Armistice lines must be mutually agreed to.”

Tomorrow we will try.