Bush praises Israel's 'courageous actions'

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/14/bush.sharon/index.html

<snip>

"Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won praise from President Bush on Wednesday for his proposed Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.

"These are historic and courageous actions," Bush said, following the leaders' meeting at the White House.

Bush also addressed the controversial so-called "right of return."

The "right of return" refers to Palestinians and descendants of refugees who left or were forced to leave Israel when the Jewish state was founded in 1948. Palestinians demand the right to return to those lands that are now part of Israel.

"It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than Israel," Bush said."

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/415419.html

Full Title: Qureia rejects U.S. statement, says Bush first president to recognize settlements

<snip>

"Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia on Wednesday rejected statements made by U.S. President George W. Bush implying that Israel would be allowed to keep some West Bank settlements in a final peace agreement.


After meeting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Washington, Bush said that a peace agreement must take into account realities on the ground. Bush said that the existence of Israeli population centers - referring to settlements - must be taken into account.

Minutes after Bush spoke, Qureia harshly criticized the U.S. president's stand. "He is the first president who has legitimized the settlements in the Palestinian territories when he said that there will be no return to the borders of 1967," he said. "We as Palestinians reject that, we cannot accept that, we reject it and we refuse it."

Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat also dismissed Bush's statement. "This is like someone giving a part of Texas' land to China," he said, adding that over the years, U.S. administrations have assured the Palestinians that issues like borders and settlements would be handled in negotiations between the two sides."

He don't know, he don't wanna know.

at Tuesday's press conference, it seems unlikely that Bush could find Israel on a world map.

... to be known as the pResident who finally brought peace to Israel and Palestine. That will get him some of the Jewish vote.

Bush endorses Sharon's Gaza pullout plan

US President George Bush has implicitly recognised Israel's claim to some West Bank settlements in a historic policy shift coupled with backing for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza pullout plan.

"In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centres, 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," Bush said on Wednesday during a news conference with Sharon.

The statement and letters Bush and Sharon exchanged could go a long way toward helping the Israeli leader push his plan to scrap 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank through a binding vote in his right-wing Likud party on 2 May.

"These are historic and courageous actions," Bush said about the Gaza withdrawal. "If all parties choose to embrace this moment, they can open the door to progress and put an end to one of the world's longest-running conflicts."

But the Wall could be moved via one to one PA/Israel talks/peace agreement. Clinton's Taba was a lot kinder to the PA - and Arafat rejected that as he demanded the end of Jewish Israel via "right of return" to even the Israel that was east of the 67 line.

I doubt any PA will accept this. But then I doubt the PA really governs anything - I expect "Hamas" to be Israel's next "partner in peace"

:-)


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1520&ncid=1520&e=1&u=/afp/20040414/pl_afp/mideast_us_bush

Bush embraces controversial Sharon plan

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) gave his blessing to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon controversial plan to pull out of Gaza but said an end to all Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories was "unrealistic."

In move likely to enrage the Palestinians and the Arab world, Bush also said Palestinian refugees must settle in an eventual Palestinian state, essentially ruling out their right of return to lands lost to Israel in 1948. <snip>

Bush vowed sustained support for "Israel's self-defense capability, including its rights to defend itself against terror" but said that the barrier Israeli is building in the West Bank must be temporary and not shape final borders. <snip>



http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGA8LZOQ1TD.html

Palestinian Cabinet Minister Rejects Bush Pledges to Israel
By Mohammed Daraghmeh
Associated Press Writer

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia on Wednesday rejected statements made by President Bush implying that Israel would be allowed to keep some West Bank settlements in a peace agreement. <snip>

Minutes after Bush spoke, Qureia harshly criticized the president's stand. "He is the first president who has legitimized the settlements in the Palestinian territories when he said that there will be no return to the borders of 1967," he said. "We as Palestinians reject that, we cannot accept that, we reject it and we refuse it." <snip>

Sharon said he explained to Bush his plan to withdraw unilaterally from all of the Gaza Strip, along with a much smaller pullback in the West Bank, as steps to reduce friction with the Palestinians. On Monday, before leaving for Washington, Sharon listed five main settlement blocs Israel intends to keep in a final peace deal. <snip>

The idiot Bush reverses 37 years of American policy (not to mention defying international law) and announces:

1. America accepts the major settlements in the West Bank, which amounts to acceptance of the principle that a nation can grab territory by means of war; and

2. America rejects the right of return, saying that the plight of Palestinian refugees can be solved by the creation of a Palestinian state.

And the servile worthless American media doesn't notice that (1) and (2) are logically and practically incompatible, since the entire point of the settlements (and the Apartheid Wall) is to destroy the possibility of a Palestinian State.

Sharon has explicitly stated that the "unilateral disengagement" is the end of the Palestinian dream of a state, and a "mortal wound" to the Palestinian people -- his intentions have always been clear to everyone but the imbeciles who buy into the "war on terrorism" fraud, namely to annex the West Bank -- but the poor stupid idiot Bush goes on jabbering about the "road map" (which Sharon destroyed) and a "Palestinian State" even as he and his obese third-rate thug war criminal buddy repudiate all of that by their actions, lacking the courage to say what they mean.

The notion that my tax dollars are used to support this disgusting filth is repugnant to me.

Answer: Zero. None. Zilch. This really speaks volumes to anything these two lying bloodsuckers decide about Palestine. Bunnypants is the one who called that sadist Sharon a "man of Peace".:puke:

David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): " If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?" Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp. 121-122.