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Israel's Friend? By Debra DeLee

Until now the biggest beneficiaries of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to evacuate settlers from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank have been the settlers. Under the guise of helping Sharon advance his disengagement initiative, President George Bush has given a green light for settlement growth to an Israeli leader with a reputation for never stopping on red.

Until now the biggest beneficiaries of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to evacuate settlers from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank have been the settlers. Under the guise of helping Sharon advance his disengagement initiative, President George Bush has given a green light for settlement growth to an Israeli leader with a reputation for never stopping on red. As a result of providing official American sanction to Sharon's expansionist dreams, the president is destroying the prospects for realizing his own vision of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, shredding the terms of the Road Map designed to achieve that vision, and weakening Israel's ability to survive as a Jewish, democratic state.

Israeli settlements were designed, in part, to block the territorial contiguity of Palestinian communities, making it impossible for Palestinians to form a viable state of their own. Successive Israeli governments have provided generous financial incentives for Israelis to move into settlements and supported a significant military force to protect them from the millions of Palestinians who live nearby.

Both Republican and Democratic governments historically opposed Israeli settlements, recognizing how harmful they are to the prospect of reaching a resolution to the conflict. Israel still found ways to pump billions of dollars into settlement expansion; even during the years of the Oslo peace process, the settler population and settlement housing continued to grow. But the U.S. worked to slow this expansion.

As Israeli and Palestinian casualties grew during the current Intifada, Bush delivered a speech calling for the creation of a viable Palestinian state alongside an Israel living in peace and security. That speech was followed by the release of the Road Map, a multilateral effort to try to realize Bush's vision. The Road Map requires Palestinians to fight terrorism and engage in political and economic reforms, while obligating Israel to take parallel steps to enhance the prospects for peace. Among those Israeli steps are the dismantlement of Israeli settlement outposts erected since March 2001 and a freeze on all settlement activity, including "natural growth" of settlements.

None of the parties involved with the Road Map met their obligations, but the initiative has remained the official policy of the Bush Administration.

Pointing to an absence of progress with the Road Map, Sharon proposed to abandon diplomacy altogether. He offered a unilateral disengagement plan that would remove all settlers from Gaza and four West Bank settlements, while reducing Israel's military presence in Gaza. At the same time, Israel would continue to control Gaza from a distance and along it borders, while deepening its presence in the areas of the West Bank in which it remains.

Consistent with his desire to strengthen Israel's presence in the West Bank, Sharon extracted a statement from Bush that acknowledged that some major Israeli settlements were expected to stay in place after a treaty was reached with the Palestinians. At the same time, the Administration received a letter from Israel making vague commitments to restrict settlement growth and remove "unauthorized" settlement outposts. But more than fifty outposts are still standing that should have been removed already under the terms of the Road Map, and Sharon has announced plans to build over 1,500 new housing units in West Bank settlements, bringing to 2,167 the number of permits issued this year so far.

The Administration's response? Publicly voicing its agreement to some settlement growth, despite the Road Map's requirement for a complete stop to this activity.

There could not be a worse time for Bush to go wobbly on settlements. The majority of Israelis support settlement evacuation. They know that if Israel is allowed to deepen its occupation and its control over the millions of Palestinians who live in the West Bank, Israeli Jews will soon find themselves outnumbered by the Arabs who live in the territories and Israel itself. At that point, Israel will either cease to be a democratic state and become an apartheid regime, or it will no longer be a Jewish country, thus defeating the whole point of the Zionist enterprise.

The only Israelis who have something to show for the disengagement plan thus far are the settlers. They've kept their outposts in place and received an historic blessing for their activities from an American president. Their Gaza settlements are not only still standing, but actually growing (with the prospects of them ever being removed diminishing every time Likud hard-liners express their opinion on the subject). That the settlements are dragging Israel down the drain seems to be of little consequence to President Bush, who bills himself as the best friend Israel ever had in the White House. But friends don't let friends commit national suicide, even during an election year.
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Debra DeLee is President and CEO of Americans for Peace Now.