Posted on 01/10/2008 1:44:39 PM PST by Wiz
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush, hardening his tone towards Israel on Thursday, 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.
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The United States rarely uses the politically charged word "occupation" to describe Israel's hold on lands captured in a 1967 war. It is a term Palestinians seeking a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip employ frequently to describe their plight.
"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 the West Bank city of Ramallah past Israeli checkpoints and settlements, could cause political pain to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose right-wing 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 U.S. 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."
An Israeli official said Bush's remarks were the basis for moving forward with negotiations.
"We accept them. We see them as consistent with understandings with the Americans and as a positive foundation for moving forward," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
If Israel is not dependent on the US, why are we sending them billions of dollars every year?
Since you are a clear secularlist, how about:
1. If you think of Israel as about three unsinkable carrier grups and mulitple brigades of Army and Marines, smack in the middle of the most strategic portion of the world, it’s cheap.
2. Western, civilized, democracies do not abandon other Wester, civilized, democracies to head-chopping savages.
Yes. They/we do...we are (supposedly!!!!) intertwined....,this is so VERY wrong...all of it, wrong.
Face it, the world at large is indifferent to Jews. Experience and the bible both teach that lesson. A little “civil squabble” in a Jewish country won’t bother the world as much as a shooting war between countries.
Haven’t Bush and Condi accumulated unused vacation and sick days? I bet they have.
Use ‘em or lose ‘em, guys!
>>>>>>Same thing throughout history. Israel cannot expect the rest of the world to protect them throughout eternity.
Seems to me that the Arabs are the ones begging for the lands they lost when they last attacked Israel and had their butts kicked. Specifically Syria is begging for the “return” of the Golan heights which they’ll use for their next adventure against Israel.
I appreciate your self correcting posts, but... RON PAUL IS A KOOK. Oops, wrong response.
A Palestinian state plus the abandonment of Israel would be a disaster of epic proportions.
How will that decrease our spending in the area?
It’s been said so many times, for so many years by so many people that I find it hard to believe that there is anyone around anymore who would possibly believe it.
Yes, perhaps I’m naive. I still picture a Judeo-Christian America in full support of our Judeo-Israeli bretheren. Perhaps, truly, God is gone from America, and I missed Him leaving somehow.
I don’t think so, yet.
Hint, he just sold someone some smart bombs, a neighbor, I believe of Israel.
believe which part? that giving them a homeland will make peace? I don’t believe that for a second. Nor do I believe the price to find out is worth paying. But I do wonder if that is the current thinking of the Administration.
1. It’s far from cheap if we get drawn into a conflict.
2. Civilized nations do not alway support those that do not act in reasonable manners. Read history.
Bush, the globalist....”New World Order”
Please Dubya go spend more free time at the Crawford, Tx. ranch and take Condi along too.
What an @%%
So they can buy our weapons, silly ! :)
And you think that is what we are doing? We are the ones that kept them at bay, we were the ones that promised to defend them, until the 6 day war, when we couldn't seem to find that agreement.
We better get the He!! out of the way, Israel can defend herself, just can't fight us along with the muzzies.
If the Palestinians want a state, let them work for it. Leaving Israel to fend for itself will determine if they are capable.
As for spending money in the area.........where in our Constitution does it say we even have to? Where does it say that we are the “forever” protector of Israel?
Dear President Bush...Please start reading Free Republic and ignore your advisors...Have you fallen into the Palestine ‘Liberation’ trap which was devised by the KGB and ArafRAT decades ago and which was discussed here on FR ?.....
The Israelis are occupying nothing but their own land which they have owned since Biblical times...They have their country, but their neighbors refuse to live in peace..That is not the Israeli’s fault and they should not have to bear the burden of paying for their neighbors’ acts of war against them...
You mean that understanding might only come through experience of the disaster that follows?
Forming a Palestinian state, letting the Democrats run the country for a term, etc.?
:-)
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