The Bush administration’s policy in the Middle East remains consistent with its support for the actions carried out by the Sharon government.

The latest controversy ignited by Israel’s clandestine scheme to expand its illegal settlements in the West Bank attests to the above assertion.

The record shows that Bush’s commitment and loyalty to Israel has pressed him to take measures never taken by any other American president.

The imaginary line of impartiality and decency that has allowed, even if timidly, successive US governments to claim legitimacy as an honest broker in Israel’s conflicts with Palestinians and Arabs has been forever crossed.

This historic change could not have happened if it was not for the ideological devotion exhibited by the pro-Israeli neoconservative circle currently infesting the US government.

Thus, in his April 2004 meeting with Sharon at the White House, President Bush declared that it was “unrealistic to expect a full and complete return” by Israel to the pre-June 1967 borders.

By releasing Israel from its responsibility regarding the most fundamental step that could ensure a just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Bush has sent a boldfaced and distasteful signal: That Israel has the US government’s support and blessing in building or expanding its settlements in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem — all prohibited under international law.

Thus it should not come as a total surprise that the Israeli government is actively building 3,500 new housing units on stolen West Bank land, so as to connect the ever-expanding illegal Jewish settlement of Maaleh Adumim to East Jerusalem.

While the project shall cement Israel’s hold on “Greater Jerusalem”, it will completely isolate Arab East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. And as Israel’s illegal wall is actively slicing up the West Bank into many little chunks, undercutting any possibility for a Palestinian state with territorial contiguity, the settlement expansion around East Jerusalem is aimed at rendering the latter a nonoption as a capital of a future state of Palestine.

The Israeli action has only one explanation: A Palestinian state is nowhere on the Sharon government’s agenda, neither now nor when the “peace talks” kick into full gear.

The news of the Israeli plans for building two new “neighborhoods” in the West Bank, as reported by the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth on March 21, was preceded a day earlier by a report in Haaretz about extensive construction in settlements taking place across the West Bank.

Aerial photographs commissioned by the Israeli Defense Ministry confirmed the allegations made by Israel’s former chief prosecutor Talia Sasson, two weeks earlier. Sasson exposed the Sharon government’s “institutional lawbreaking” and theft of private Palestinian land.

Israel’s intentions were very clear from the outset, and those who for a moment believed in Sharon’s change of heart were sadly mistaken. After all, the comments made by Sharon’s top advisor Dov Weisglass, and cited by Haaretz a few months ago, were anything but vague: “What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until Palestinians turn into Finns.”

What is worth noticing in the above statement, aside from its dismissal of any Israeli good intentions in this period of “hope”, is that the US government is a major participant in the swindle-the-Palestinian charade currently underway.

Those who wished to dismiss Weisglass’ comments as unrepresentative of US policy on the settlements were up for a major shock on March 25 when Israeli Public Radio interviewed US Ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer. “US policy is the support that the president has given for the retention by Israel of the major Israeli population centers as the outcome of negotiations,” he said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s silly attempt to downplay Kurtzer’s statement was of little relevance, considering that the US government’s Middle East policy has been decidedly consistent with the comments made by its ambassador in Israel.

By allowing for the retention of “major” Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and dubbing as “unrealistic” an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 border, and the incessant denial of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return (on the basis that it threatens Israel’s Jewish identity), one has to wonder what is left for Palestinians to gain from the anxiously awaited peace talks?