JERUSALEM, 13 April 2005 — A summit between US President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, designed to emphasize their close relationship, exposed fundamental differences over their visions for their future after Israel leaves the Gaza Strip, analysts said yesterday.
Sharon had been looking to the summit at Bush’s Texan ranch for yet more support for his disengagement plan which should see all 8,000 settlers leave the Gaza Strip by the end of the summer as he battles fierce opposition to the project from within the ranks of his own right-wing Likud party. But while Bush once again praised Sharon’s courage for pursuing the plan, and reiterated that a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank was unrealistic, he dispelled Sharon of any illusions that he would turn a blind eye to his plans to expand a settlement on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Sharon may have signed up to the internationally drafted road map peace plan, which targets the creation of a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel.
But observers believe that, unlike Bush, he does not want the withdrawal from Gaza to be a step along the road to a Palestinian state but instead ease pressure for a more comprehensive pullout from the West Bank.
“The Americans are unhappy as not only do they not accept Sharon’s position on the settlements in the West Bank but they also fear that the prime minister will limit himself to leaving the Gaza Strip and block any subsequent peace process with the Palestinians,” the Israeli analyst Akiva Eldar told AFP. “They (the Americans) want assurances that the prime minister will not just stop there,” added Eldar, a columnist for the Haaretz daily.
Sharon’s top advisor Dov Weisglass, a chief architect of the Gaza pullout and who was with the prime minister in Texas, raised alarm in US circles late last year when he told Haaretz that “the significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process. ... And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the (Palestinian) refugees, the (final) borders and Jerusalem,” he added.
The disengagement plan, first unveiled in late 2003 when Yasser Arafat was at the helm of the Palestinian Authority, was partly inspired by Sharon’s belief that he had no Palestinian partner in the peace process. Bush had long since signed up to the same idea but attempts by Sharon to persuade the US leader on Monday that Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate former prime minister who replaced Arafat in January, was also not to be trusted backfired.
“Sharon believed that he would be able to present Abu Mazen (Abbas) as the bad boy of the region, the rais who let them down and was not doing a thing against terrorism,” said Orly Azulai of the best-selling Yediot Aharonot daily. “It did not work. Bush told Sharon clearly: Israel has a partner now, and it must cooperate with it.”
An editorial in the right-wing Jerusalem Post said Bush’s desire to not prejudice final status negotiations and thus help Abbas, who is also expected at the White House in the coming weeks, lay at the root of his censuring of Sharon’s plan to build 3,500 new homes at a settlement on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
“The US is clearly trying to square the circle of supporting Sharon which entails taking positions that impinge on final status issues, such as borders and refugees, and not ‘prejudicing negotiations’,” it said.
“The problem is that the White House continues to refuse to recognize that the leeway Sharon has taken (by withdrawing from Gaza) saved the road map and is part of a package deal” the other part of which is “namely solidifying Israeli control over the settlement blocs.”
