This is more than a little depressing. The US is merely a front for right-wing Israel. We are here to do Sharon's bidding.

Sharon Coup: U.S. Go-Ahead

By throwing his support on Wednesday behind an Israeli plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, President Bush provided diplomatic assurances that represented a victory for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Mr. Sharon wanted three commitments: backing for the Gaza withdrawal, American recognition that Israel would hold on to parts of the West Bank, and an American rejection of the right of millions of Palestinian refugees from the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 and their descendants to return to their lands in what is now Israel. He got them all by promising to trade something Israelis overwhelmingly do not want any more: the Gaza settlements and a handful of settlements in the West Bank. And he got them without having to negotiate with the Palestinians.

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The End of the Road
by Billmon

This is a shameful capitulation. As the Reuters story notes, the statement overturns in one stroke almost 40 years of official U.S. policy -- a policy Shrub's father actually showed a fair amount of political courage in defending. For decades, Israeli leaders (Likud and Labor alike) have worked to create those "new realities on the ground" -- as the statement, with the usual neocon arrogance, describes them -- through illegal land expropriations, relentless discrimination against Palestinian landowners, and lavish government subsidies for Jewish settlers. And for decades, the U.S. government has refused to accept Israel's bully boy tactics, despite the relentless, continuous efforts of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. That's gone now -- and probably for good, as I'll explain in a moment. Today's statement essentially guts the road map (itself a largely gutless process) by deleting the essential principle that the final status of the territories will not be determined by unilateral action on either side (which in the real world, means on the Israeli side.) It also negates the fundamental premise of UN Resolution 242 -- the bedrock of all peace efforts over the past 40 years -- that territory will not be acquired by force. Indeed, Sharon actually ends up with something better than an approved settlement list from Bush. He gets virtual carte blanche to keep any settlement he wishes to keep -- and indeed, to grab any part of the West Bank he wishes to grab, as long as it can be connected in some way to those "existing major Israeli populations centers." And if you know anything about Israel's settlement policies in the occupied territories, you know how good they are at connecting things. [...] Politics definitely does make strange bedmates, when a old Peace Now supporter like me is rooting for the ideological partners of Kahane Chai to win an election. But what the peace camp desperately needs right now is to prevent another fait accompli like the one that went down in Washington today. A year from now, Sharon and Bush may both be gone, and Israelis and Palestinians alike may be more willing to give peace -- real peace -- another chance. A forlorn hope, I know -- but better than no hope at all. Unfortunately, no hope is what I think we can realistically expect from the political process here in America. Bush's statement marks the effective end of any realistic chance that the United States will play a constructive role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Washington truly is Likud-occupied territory now, and resistance is almost certainly futile. For all intents and purposes, the world's only superpower has been bound and gagged.

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Sharon defers Palestinian state

In interviews with the Israeli media, Mr Sharon said: "In the unilateral plan, there is no Palestinian state".

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The day the neocons won

The Neocon Likudniks have their great victory. Bush endorsed Sharon's desperate land grab in the West Bank not realizing the blowback effects in Iraq. To any Arab, this is naked land theft. There is no hope for a Palestinian state with armed compounds in their midst, with the right of Israeli protection and no responsibility to the local government.

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The timing of it!
by Helena Cobban

I cannot believe George W. Bush. His administration's policy in Iraq is a bloody and dangerous shambles. Afghanistan is slipping back into anarchy. He needs every iota of support he can get from Muslims and Arabs worldwide if any of them are ever to help him survive all this. And at this very point, he suddenly decides to give away the whole store regarding the West Bank, to Ariel Sharon.

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Ali Abunimah points out that this is only making the reality public.

Why all the fuss about the Bush-Sharon meeting?
by Ali Abunimah

The 14 April meeting between President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Washington sent Palestinian leaders into a flying panic. But their response reeks of desperation and self-interest rather than any real concern for the fate of the Palestinian people and their land or because the results of the meeting represented any new setback for Palestinian rights.

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A Higher Law
by Billmon

A friend of mine likes to call the Israeli-Palestinian issue the "Death Valley" of American progressives -- a hellish, blasted wasteland that sucks the life out of anyone who tries to cross it. Better not to go there, and instead work the land that can be watered and tilled: health care, the environment, econoimc policy, etc. And for a long time I thought that was good advice. But since 9/11, I've come to think that the desert has to be crossed, otherwise the gradual descent into an endless war in the Middle East is going to doom whatever slim hopes there may be for a revival of progressive domestic policies in this country -- much as the coming of the Cold War did after World War II. Combine that with the fact that the suitcase nuke that will obliterate downtown Washington has probably already been made, and is just waiting patiently for the first terrorist to get his hands on it, and it's pretty clear "Death Valley" is spreading faster than the Sahara -- gobbling up our futures and probably our childrens' future as well. I was in a car crash once, when I was much younger, and the sensation I have now is the same one I had in the moment before impact, as I watched that telephone poll hurtling towards my windshield. It was an odd, detached moment -- like watching someone die in a movie -- and my last thought was something like "oh well." Physics saved my life that day -- the truck I was driving was heavy enough, and moving fast enough, to break that telephone poll like a toothpick. I walked away with a broken nose and a slight concussion. But I'll always remember that moment of helpless resignation, when I realized there was nothing I could do to stop the crash. It doesn't look like this crash can stopped, either. I guess that's one of the essential elements of tragedy -- the disaster can be seen but not avoided. Maybe it's the same feeling that John O'Neill had as he ran back into the South Tower that day, knowing what he had feared most had come to pass. I don't know. When the next major attack hits America, and the pressure to retaliate with genocidal force becomes impossible for our rotten political system to resist, maybe then I'll know. I'm left at a bit of a loss here. What is to be done? The Popular Front isn't looking like a very viable proposition at the moment. Maybe it's just time to sit back and see whether the metaphorical truck can break through the Middle Eastern telephone poll -- or wraps itself around it, turning the passengers into jelly. "Oh well."

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I know the feeling.