[R-G] Road Map to Peace was bogus from the start; Netanyahu cites secret deal with Bush to justify more settlements

[Intense Red]

<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/netanyahu-cites-secret-deal-with-bush-to-justify-more-settlements-1695486.html>
Netanyahu cites secret deal with Bush to justify more settlements

Revelation puts more strain on relations with US as Obama heads for Middle 
East

The Israeli government of Benjmain Netanyahu is seeking to deflect 
Washington's demand for a total settlement freeze by complaining that it 
ignores secret agreements between his predecessors and the Bush 
administration that construction in existing Jewish settlements could 
continue.

The rift between Mr Netanyahu's government and the US appeared to deepen 
yesterday, with a clear declaration by President Barack Obama that a freeze – 
including on "natural growth" of West Bank settlements – was among 
Israeli "obligations".

But Mr Netanyahu's government – which has made it clear it will not accept a 
total freeze – is pushing to restore at least part of the 
private "understandings" which it is emerging were struck between Israel and 
the previous US administration despite the Bush team's repeatedly stated 
opposition to settlement construction. 

The Israeli government is arguing that Ariel Sharon, with reservations, agreed 
in 2003 to the internationally endorsed Road Map and the withdrawal of 8,000 
settlers from Gaza in 2005, only on condition that Israel could proceed with 
expansion within the physical boundaries of existing West Bank settlements. A 
senior Israeli official familiar with the current talks with the US 
said: "When the government of Israel adopted the Road Map... it was based on 
understandings reached with the US. It is hard for the US to say we have to 
keep to our commitments but ignore the understandings."

The argument was being pressed in talks that Israel's Defence Minister Ehud 
Barak was holding in Washington yesterday and is likely to feature in 
discussions that the US Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, is expected to 
have with the Israeli leadership here on Monday. Israeli officials are braced 
for President Obama to repeat his call for a settlement freeze when he makes 
his major speech on US relations with the Muslim world in Cairo tomorrow.

Israeli officials also complain that the new team in Washington is making "no 
distinction" between settlements in the larger blocs that Mr Bush told Mr 
Sharon in 2004 he expected would be in Israeli territory in any final status 
deal with the Palestinians, and those elsewhere in the occupied West Bank. 
Although the Bush administration later "clarified" that borders were a matter 
for negotiation, Israel swiftly assumed it was entitled to continue building 
within such blocs.

There is no sign that President Obama sees himself bound by any such covert 
oral understandings reached with his predecessor's administration – the 
status and durability of which has reportedly been challenged with vigour by 
US officials. Mr Obama told National Public Radio: "I've said very clearly to 
the Israelis both privately and publicly that a freeze on settlements, 
including natural growth, is part of those obligations." He added that 
Palestinians also had parallel obligations to improve security and end 
incitement.

The senior Israeli official suggested that Mr Netanyahu was ready to reach an 
agreement with the US precluding settlement-building that would in his view 
prejudice final status negotiations with the Palestinians, and that this 
would include not building on E1, the bitterly controversial planned corridor 
linking Jerusalem to the large settlement of Ma'ale Adumim. The official 
rejected reports of a secret coalition agreement between Mr Netanyahu and his 
hard-right Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, to resume E1-building.

But the Palestinians – and for now at least the US – argue that any further 
settlement construction would prejudice negotiations, not least in Arab East 
Jerusalem where Mr Netanyahu is determined to keep a free hand in building 
settlements. Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the Six Day War in 1967, but 
this has never been accepted by the international community.

Haaretz reported yesterday that Washington was "furious" over plans by the 
Jerusalem municipality, backed by the Interior Ministry, to build a 
nine-storey 200-room hotel in East Jerusalem, just 100 metres from the Old 
City, which includes a Palestinian market and kindergarten.

The row has exposed the extent that the Bush administration was willing to 
sanction settlement-building, despite its publicly stated policy. Dov 
Weisglass, who was the closest lieutenant of then-prime minister Sharon, said 
in a newspaper yesterday that the deals originated in a 1990s agreement 
on "natural growth" which was further refined in 2002, "though the Americans 
completely denied the existence of the understandings". They have been 
confirmed by Bush administration assistant secretary of state Elliott Abrams.

Mr Weisglass said it had been agreed between Mr Sharon, himself, Mr Abrams and 
another US official, Stephen Hadley, that settlement growth could continue 
provided it did not involve new settlements, that no further "Palestinian 
land" would be expropriated, that expansion would be within the "existing 
construction line" and that public funds would not be used to encourage 
settlements. The Bush administration's secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice, 
confirmed the agreement, he said.


-- 
"When the president does it, that means it is not illegal." -- US President 
Richard M. Nixon, clearly confusing the president of a republic with a 
dictator.