Sharon actually seems to be conceding that some settlements have to go. Time will tell whether Sharon is telling Bush what he wants to hear or maybe Sharon has actually changed. Maybe the idiot in the White House will, like Nixon going to China, actually get something right. How far Sharon is willing to move from his concept of Bantustans as a Palestinian state remains to be seen. Hope springs eternal.

Bush tells Israel to abandon West Bank settlements
US President tries to impress Arab leaders with a stern warning for Ariel Sharon but doubts remain about road-map to peace

George Bush served notice on Israel yesterday that it must evacuate Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The US President gave the warning at a gathering with Arab leaders in the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh.

"Israel has got responsibilities. Israel must deal with the settlements. Israel must make sure there is a continuous territory that the Palestinians can call home," Mr Bush said.
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The thousand-day war

"Did you know the tree owl can turn its head 270 degrees?" was the CBS trivia question last week in an apparent synopsis of its report on Israel's agreeing to George W. Bush's road map. Bush emphasizes the "W" in interviews with the Arab press, perhaps to hint that he's a new, more determined version of his father, who was also president.
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Bush Sticks to the Broad Strokes
In Mideast Peace Push, President Wary of Details and Deep Intervention

President Bush, who today begins his first high-profile effort at Middle East peacemaking, is convinced that Israel must accept a Palestinian state to ensure its survival, according to current and former aides who have heard him discuss the subject. But they say he has shown little interest in the details of the complex disputes in the region and remains skeptical of intervening deeply in the negotiating process.

Bush often has a viscerally negative reaction when officials try to delve deeply into issues -- such as the final borders of Israel and a Palestinian state, or the status of Jerusalem -- that are central to the conflict, according to people who have participated in discussions with the president. President Bill Clinton at the end of his term debated those questions at length with Israelis and Palestinians, but Bush dismisses them as "all those old issues," two participants in interagency debates said.

The president has baffled some of his aides with comments they thought minimized the obstacles toward the two-state solution he talks about. For instance, the president has told aides that the Israelis are wasting their money on expanding settlements in the West Bank because ultimately those projects will become housing developments for Palestinians.

Some aides suggest this is a naive view of the settlement issue, noting that experts on both sides of the issue believe unchecked expansion of the settlements would make it impossible to create a viable Palestinian state. Other Bush advisers say the president's comments simply reflected his determination to create a Palestinian state.
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  thanks to Altercation

Hoping a Troubled Bridge Over Water Will Lead to Mideast Peace

To signify a new era of American peacemaking in the Middle East, the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers are to appear together publicly for the first time here on Wednesday, in the company of the American president.

A lot has stood in the way of this image: Palestinian terrorism, Israeli occupation, a swimming pool.

The Americans have dealt decisively with that last obstacle: White House operatives had the Jordanians build a bridge over the pool behind the king's new palace here, officials said, so that the leaders could walk over the water, side by side, toward the massed cameras.
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Israel discovers that democracy is not an Israeli value

The Electronic Intifada and others have warned on several recent occasions of Israel's ongoing slide into extremism, anti-democratic practices, and the increasing popularity of what is a blatantly genocidal policy of the population transfer of Palestinians. The active promotion of these concepts by American politicians and other public figures, and the tacit acceptance of these disturbing calls by US-based pro-Israel organisations and the US media should concern decent people everywhere (see the Related Links below for reports of these instances).

Today, an Israeli research institute is spelling out how widespread these views have become among Israel's Jewish population. Will we take note and take action, or will we continue to be lulled into inaction by the endless repetition of the oxymoronic phrase "Israeli democracy", even as Israel daily kills and otherwise drives West Bank and Gazan Palestinians off their ancestral homeland, and even as most of Israel's Jewish population fantasise about a country ethnically cleansed of the Arab citizens living within Israel's own borders?
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