today for the meeting between President Obama and Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?
That's not to downplay the importance of a warm public meeting –
conveying solidarity and a strong alliance -- which some supporters of
Israel complain is something they haven't seen enough of from the
Obama administration, though today will be their fifth meeting since
Netanyahu became prime minister.
As you may recall, the White House didn't permit any public
photographs of the President and Netanyahu during their meeting in
March; the White House was upset at the Israelis announcing new
settlements in Jerusalem during Vice President Biden's visit there,
which senior adviser David Axelrod called an "affront" and an
"insult."
But more substantively, today, what's expected?
US officials are seeking:
• A commitment from Israel to make the transition into direct peace
talks with the Palestinians.
"Certainly a major focus of the discussion will be around the progress
that's been made so far in the proximity talks and the opportunity to
make the transition into direct talks," the National Security
Council's senior director for the Middle East and North Africa Dan
Shapiro told reporters this week."We've always viewed the proximity
talks as a mechanism to get to direct talks, which is where the real
negotiations toward agreements and ultimately an agreement that will
produce a two-state solution can be achieved."
• A discussion of what additional steps Israel can take regarding
alleviating the crisis in Gaza, and a review of recent steps taken by
Israel regarding the liberalization of the kinds of goods and the
kinds of commercial activity that can go through the crossings between
Israel and Gaza.
• Greater commitment to stop Israeli settlement activity; the 10 month
partial settlement freeze in the West Bank instituted by Netanyahu
expires in September.
White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told me a few weeks ago that
President Obama "has been clear what we need to do to seize this
moment of opportunity here in the region to finally make peace. Peace
where Israel feels secure and peace that is in balance with the
Palestinians aspirations for sovereignty. That is possible. It is now
the time, given where we are, to basically find that proper balance."
Israeli officials are seeking:
• First and foremost, additional reassurance on pace of sanctions and
other actions against Iran for its nuclear program
• A strong public demand by POTUS that the Palestinians agree to
direct talks by a specific date. Israeli officials see Netanyahu's 10
month settlement freeze as more than any prime minister has ever
undertaken, and having been done in return for direct talks, which
President Obama has yet to deliver.
• A public affirmation of commitments made by President George W. Bush
to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in an April 2004 letter on the
final borders of the Jewish state – a letter sent around the time of
the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the Northern West Bank. Bush
wrote that any final peace settlement should reflect "new realities on
the ground, including already existing major Israeli population
centers," and that "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."
The Washington Times' Eli Lake took a closer look at this story a
couple days ago, which you can read HERE.
-Jake Tapper
--------
As Israel's prime minister prepares for his fifth official meeting
with President Obama this week, the White House has declined to
publicly affirm commitments made by President Bush to Israel in 2004
on the final borders of the Jewish state.
The interpretation of a 2004 letter from Mr. Bush to Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon has been a source of tension between Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr. Obama.
Mr. Netanyahu is expected in the meeting on Tuesday to discuss both
the prospects for direct talks with the Palestinians and whether he
will renew a 10-month freeze of new settlement construction on the
West Bank. Both leaders are also looking to improve the negative
atmosphere of the U.S.-Israeli relationship in the past year.
The Israelis maintain that Mr. Bush's letter is the foundation for the
United States to accept new construction in the Jewish settlements
that encircle Jerusalem, areas that make up the vast majority of the
Jewish population on the West Bank.
Mr. Obama and his White House team have fought to get Mr. Netanyahu to
stop new settlement construction in Jerusalem and are hoping the
Israelis will extend a new construction freeze for the West Bank that
is set to expire in September.
The April 14, 2004, letter from Mr. Bush to Mr. Sharon said a final
peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians should reflect
"new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli
population centers," and that "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."
Mr. Bush's letter also said Palestinians would have to agree to the
final borders, yet at the time the letter was touted as a major
concession by Mr. Sharon's top advisers as Israel was preparing to
withdraw settlements and Israeli troops from Gaza unilaterally.
During a conference call Friday with reporters, Dan Shapiro, the White
House National Security Council's senior director for the Middle East
and North Africa, declined to say whether the 2004 letter reflected
the Obama administration's understanding of the parameters or borders
of a final settlement to the conflict.
"I don't think … we'll have a comment on these kinds of … private
discussions that we're having with the parties. We have a very good
understanding with our Israeli partners about the foundations of this
relationship and this effort to move toward our shared goal of
comprehensive peace and two states," he said.
Robert Danin, a Middle East specialist at the Council on Foreign
Relations, said the Quartet — the diplomatic body that represents the
United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations —
does not recognize the commitments from Mr. Bush to Mr. Sharon either.
Mr. Danin, who in the spring left a position in the office of Tony
Blair, the Quartet's representative in Jerusalem, said last week,
"That letter and the statement was a U.S.-Israel understanding, it was
never endorsed by the Quartet as such, it has never been a Quartet
issue as such."
Israeli diplomats have claimed that there were verbal understandings
that stemmed from the 2004 Bush letter that enshrined Israel's right
to expand and build in the settlements that form part of the Jerusalem
suburbs known as Ma'aleh Adumim.
Bush administration officials have offered different accounts of the
details and content of the verbal understandings on settlement
construction.
The Israelis, however, did look to lock in the Obama administration to
the verbal agreements it had with the Bush administration.
Once before the 2008 election and once shortly after that election,
Sallai Meridor, Israel's ambassador to the United States at the time,
sought to get Mr. Bush's White House National Security Council to
agree to write down these oral understandings on settlements as part
of a master list of U.S.-Israeli agreements, according to two former
senior Bush administration officials.
Stephen J. Hadley, White House national security adviser for Mr. Bush,
rebuffed the Israeli ambassador both times in part because he did not
seek to hem in the next administration.
"There is a document listing all the written agreements," a former
senior Bush administration official said. "It covers Bush but also
prior written agreements. Sallai wanted it to include all oral
agreements. Hadley did not want to reduce to writing that which was
never written."
Mr. Danin called the 2004 Bush letter "quite path-breaking," adding
that "it took place in a unique context. Israel was withdrawing from
Gaza, unilaterally, it was dismantling settlements for the first time,
again unilaterally. What was then called ideological compensation, the
United States helped to try to encourage this process of Israel
withdrawing from Gaza."
Aaron David Miller, who has been a senior Middle East adviser to six
U.S. secretaries of state, said the United States over the years has
sent letters of assurances to Israel, the Palestine Liberation
Organization and Middle Eastern states such as Syria, Egypt and
Jordan.
In order to entice the Palestinians to participate in the 1991 Madrid
peace conference, Mr. Miller said, President George H.W. Bush referred
in a letter to PLO leader Yasser Arafat to East Jerusalem as "occupied
territory." Israeli leaders call the same territory their country's
"undivided and eternal capital."
No U.S. president since George H.W. Bush has publicly called East
Jerusalem occupied territory.
"These letters serve a very important function at the time, but as
circumstances change parties conclude they are no longer of as much
utility and value," Mr. Miller said.
The 2004 letter is important also because Mr. Obama is looking to
start direct negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians in the
coming weeks. Both sides now negotiate only indirectly through the
offices of George Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader who is
Mr. Obama's personal envoy to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
If the Palestinians agree to direct talks, one of the top agenda items
will be the contours and perimeters of a Palestinian-Israeli border.
The Arab League peace proposal says the border should be along the
1949 armistice lines and include the complete withdrawal of Israeli
settlements in the territory that the Jewish state won in the 1967
war. The 2004 letter from Mr. Bush directly contradicts the Arab
League position.
In the Camp David talks in July 2000 and the Taba talks in January
2001, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agreed on the concept of
land swaps so that population centers over the armistice lines of
Jewish Israelis would remain in Israel.
Mr. Netanyahu likely will propose an extension to the current 10-month
settlement construction freeze on the West Bank in exchange for a
peace process with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
But Mr. Netanyahu and his advisers have not said they would endorse
prior Israeli peace offers made during failed negotiations, such as
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's 2008 offer to Mr. Abbas to divide
Jerusalem and allow international monitors to control access to the
Temple Mount, the site that includes both the remnants of the second
Jewish Temple and the Al Aqsa Mosque.
Mr. Netanyahu's Cabinet also has sought to establish the principle
that Israel's final borders be "defensible," and must give Israel
control over positions in the Jordan River Valley.
The Israeli prime minister also has taken a dim view of unilateral
territorial withdrawal in light of the recent rocket war from Gaza.
Moshe Yaalon, the minister of strategic affairs in Mr. Netanyahu's
government, wrote in a recent essay for the Jerusalem Center for
Public Affairs that unilateral withdrawal encourages terrorists.
"The fact is that the mere discussion of removing Israeli settlements
encourages jihadists across the globe," he wrote. "Their stated aim,
after all, is not to establish a Palestinian state but to 'wipe Israel
off the map.'"
© Copyright 2010 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint
permission.
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