WaPo: US pressure to freeze settlements "complicated" by Bush "secret agreement"

AMERICAN FOOTPRINTS

5/24/09

WaPo: US pressure to freeze settlements "complicated" by Bush "secret agreement"

Goodness, gracious me! Glenn Kessler and Howard Schneider just posted
a doozy on the WaPo site, which will put the cat among the pigeons!
And why am I not surprised to find the fingerprints of our dear old
friend and pardoned Iran-Contra criminal, Eliott Abrams, on this one.

The story begins when Nentanyahu came to meet Obama a week or so ago
and got an earful wherever he went in DC, especially about halting the
expansion of settlements. It wasn't just at the White House and State
Department. He also got a rude welcome on Capitol Hill among all those
Congresscritters Bibi thought were his old buddies.

You know you're on shaky ground when Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla) tells
you, ""The Palestinians have enormous responsibilities, but the notion
that Israel can continue to expand settlements, whether it be through
natural growth or otherwise, without diminishing the capacity of a
two-state solution is both unrealistic, and, I would respectfully
suggest, hypocritical." Ah, hum.

But! Not to be discouraged by such a cool reception in DC, the
Israelis are trying to push back, restating boldly that they haveno
plan to freeze settlements. You see, according to Bibi's spokesman,
until there are "final status arrangements," of which settlements are
one, "it would not be fair to kill normal life inside existing
communities."

Hmmm. Not fair to kill normal life. Let's stop and think about that
for a moment. Might there be some other folks in the neighborhood who
share a similar sentiment that it's unfair to kill normal life inside
existing communities? Especially given that Israel undertook in Phase
I of the Road Map to "take all necessary steps to help normalise
Palestinian life...[and] also freeze[s] all settlement activity,
consistent with the Mitchell report."

But, but... say the Israelis. George Bush gave Sharon a letter in 2004
that had caveats. And indeed Bush did. Here's what the Wikipedia
article on the Road Map for peace describes about the letter. [Note:
this is a stable part of the Wikipedia Road Map article, so there
seems to be consensus about its accuracy.]

On April 14, 2004, President George W. Bush wrote a letter to Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon seeming to herald two significant changes
or increased specifications to longstanding but ambiguous U.S. policy
which had most recently been embodied in the road map. For the first
time during the road map process, Bush indicated his expectations as
to the outcome of the final status negotiations. The letter was widely
seen as a triumph for Sharon, since Bush's expectations seemed to
favor Israel on two highly contentious issues. Regarding final
borders, the letter stated: "In light of new realities on the ground,
including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is
unrealistic that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a
full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all
previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the
same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status
agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed
changes that reflect these realities...". Second, regarding the
Palestinian refugees' right of return, Bush also stated: "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."

So far, Bush's 2004 letter, though supremely irritating and
disappointing to the Palestinians, nonethless tracks with what most
observers had expected the Road Map process to eventually lead to.
True, the letter may appear to prejudge certain "final status
arrangements." However, the points in the letter don't appear to be
inconsistent with Israel's obligations under the Road Map.

But wait! There's more! Here's the kicker, from Kessler and Schneider:

In an interview with The Washington Post last year, Sharon aide Dov
Weissglas said that in 2005, when Sharon was poised to remove settlers
from Gaza, the Bush administration arrived at a secret agreement --
not disclosed to the Palestinians -- that Israel could add homes in
settlements it expected to keep, as long as the construction was
dictated by market demand, not subsidies.

Elliott Abrams, a former deputy national security adviser who
negotiated the arrangement with Weissglas,confirmed the deal in an
interview last week. "At the time of the Gaza withdrawal, there were
lengthy discussions about how settlement activity might be
constrained, and in fact it was constrainedin the later part of the
Sharon years and the Olmert years in accordance with the ideas that
were discussed," he said. "There was something of an understanding
realized on these questions, but it was never a written agreement."

Regev said Israeli and U.S. negotiators are discussing the degree to
which the terms of the 2004 letter will apply under the new
administration, but U.S. officials indicated that Obama wants to move
beyond the 2004 letter and hold Israel to its commitments under the
road map. "The bottom line is we expect all the parties in the region
to honor their commitments, and for the Israelis, that means a stop to
settlements, as the president said," a senior administration official
said.

So let me get this straight. The WaPo has since 2008 been sitting on
the knowledge of "something of an unwritten understanding" or "secret
agreement" -- which was not disclosed to the Palestinians -- that
exempted Israel from commonly understood expectations of Israel's Road
Map obligations.

Just curious. Was this agreement shared with the Quartet? With Middle
East envoys like James Wolfensohn, who had the unenviable task of
trying to get the Israelis to deal with the Gaza withdrawal about the
same time Eliot was negotiating that "unwritten understanding"? Was it
disclosed to other branches of the US government?It certainly wasn't
shared with with the US public, either by the Bush Administration or
the WaPo, even though the issue of Israeli settlements has become the
focus of increasing public disapproval of Israeli actions, and even
though it has even been a factor in US electoral politics. Just how
many folks were in on this little private understanding. Maybe Eliott
shared that tidbit with his friends who hired him at theCouncil on
Foreign Relations

. Who knows!

Still, it seems that the previously undisclosed "understanding" is
rapidly becoming NOL (no longer operative). The last statement quoted
by Gessler and Schneider from a "senior administration official"
doesn't sound like much of a "discussion" is happening between US and
Israeli officials. Let's just review it one more time.

"The bottom line is we expect all the parties in the region to honor
their commitments, and for the Israelis, that means a stop to
settlements, as the president said".

That message is going to elicit howls of outrage and betrayal from Tel
Aviv. One assumes that news of the "unwritten understanding" will also
produce howls from Ramallah, though somewhat offset by Obama's
apparent seriousness to hold the Israelis to their commitments. But it
appears that any Israelii howls aren't going to be met with much
sympathy from the Obama Administration, or even on Capitol Hill.

By the way, tell me again, who got suckered when Bibi met Obama?

Cross-posted at Attackerman

UPDATE: My cynicism about the WaPo's Middle East coverage is high, but
I'm still astonished at how completely they've buried this story. This
story not only isn't on the home page. You have to scroll down six
articles in the "More News" column on the "World" front to find it.
And even on the "Middle East" front, two other articles are showcased,
and this is only one of a number of headlines at the top of "More
News". Maybe they're hoping it stays buried until the Sunday shows are
over.

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