JERUSALEM, 11 January 2008 — US President George W. Bush, hardening his tone toward Israel yesterday, urged an end to “the occupation” of the West Bank and pushed for a peace treaty to be signed within a year to create a Palestinian state.
The United States rarely uses the politically charged word “occupation” to describe Israel’s hold on lands captured in a 1967 war.
“The establishment of the state of Palestine is long overdue. The Palestinian people deserve it,” Bush said in a statement he read to reporters in a Jerusalem hotel.
Bush’s language, after he traveled to Ramallah past Israeli checkpoints and settlements, could cause political pain to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose coalition partners usually bridle at such remarks.
“There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967,” Bush said. He had earlier met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and visited Bethlehem, also in the West Bank.
Bush pressed the Palestinians to rein in militants. He said any negotiations must also ensure Israel has “secure, recognized and defensible borders” alongside a “viable, contiguous, sovereign and independent” Palestine.
Challenging skeptics of his new push for peace on the first US presidential visit to Ramallah, he told a news conference with Abbas: “I believe it’s going to happen, that there will be a signed peace treaty by the time I leave office.”
Critics say Bush, who steps down in January 2009, has failed to deploy Washington’s full weight in seeking to end the 60-year-old conflict during his first seven years in office.
A summit he hosted at Annapolis in November ended a hiatus in negotiations since 2000.
But many doubt differences can be overcome now, as Bush seeks to burnish his legacy in the Middle East after five years of war in Iraq. Olmert is politically weak and Abbas cannot control the Gaza Strip, which is in the hands of Hamas.
Bush said he had urged Abbas and Olmert “to make sure their teams negotiate seriously, starting right now”.
His use of the term “peace treaty” was seen by some as an indication he was not ready to settle for a vaguer “framework agreement” which Israeli and Palestinian officials have said Olmert thinks is all that is feasible before Bush steps down.
