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Bush urges end to Israeli occupation
Reuters via Yahoo! News ^ | 2008 Jan 11 | Jeffrey Heller and Matt Spetalnick

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 ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Government; Israel; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bush; bushvisit; farcicalnonsense; illegaloccupation; israel; resolution242; truthhurts
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To: Lijahsbubbe

If Israel is not dependent on the US, why are we sending them billions of dollars every year?


61 posted on 01/10/2008 2:15:45 PM PST by RC2
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To: RC2

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.


62 posted on 01/10/2008 2:16:03 PM PST by TheThirdRuffian
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To: Lijahsbubbe
Israel and America have a mutual need for each other when it comes to the Arabs.

Yes. They/we do...we are (supposedly!!!!) intertwined....,this is so VERY wrong...all of it, wrong.

63 posted on 01/10/2008 2:16:31 PM PST by Brad’s Gramma (Mother of the Bride here, treat me with respect for once, will ya? ;))
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To: Lijahsbubbe

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.


64 posted on 01/10/2008 2:17:09 PM PST by HiTech RedNeck (Beat a better path, and the world will build a mousetrap at your door.)
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To: rollo tomasi

Haven’t Bush and Condi accumulated unused vacation and sick days? I bet they have.

Use ‘em or lose ‘em, guys!


65 posted on 01/10/2008 2:17:18 PM PST by ncphinsfan
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To: RC2

>>>>>>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.


66 posted on 01/10/2008 2:17:37 PM PST by angkor ("We are not very many mistakes away from a second Holocaust." Newt Gingrich, Nov 15 2007)
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist
RON PAUL’S A KOOK! Ooops, wrong thread...

I appreciate your self correcting posts, but... RON PAUL IS A KOOK. Oops, wrong response.

67 posted on 01/10/2008 2:17:48 PM PST by DoughtyOne (< fence >< sound immigration policies >< /weasles >< /RINOs >< /Reagan wannabees that are liberal >)
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To: RC2

A Palestinian state plus the abandonment of Israel would be a disaster of epic proportions.

How will that decrease our spending in the area?


68 posted on 01/10/2008 2:18:21 PM PST by ltc8k6
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To: SpinnerWebb

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.


69 posted on 01/10/2008 2:18:48 PM PST by Lijahsbubbe
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To: Brad's Gramma; Lijahsbubbe

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.


70 posted on 01/10/2008 2:18:48 PM PST by SpinnerWebb (Islam ... If you can't join them, beat them.)
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To: nicmarlo
I’d like to know........for whom is Bush a puppet???????

Hint, he just sold someone some smart bombs, a neighbor, I believe of Israel.

71 posted on 01/10/2008 2:18:53 PM PST by itsahoot (Gingrich: "We don't have a peace process. We have a surrender process." (Duncan Hunter gets it.))
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To: Lijahsbubbe

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.


72 posted on 01/10/2008 2:20:32 PM PST by SpinnerWebb (Islam ... If you can't join them, beat them.)
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To: TheThirdRuffian

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.


73 posted on 01/10/2008 2:21:01 PM PST by RC2
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To: itsahoot

Bush, the globalist....”New World Order”
Please Dubya go spend more free time at the Crawford, Tx. ranch and take Condi along too.


74 posted on 01/10/2008 2:21:35 PM PST by tflabo
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To: itsahoot
the Bush administration has moved up by a day the date on which it will formally notify Congress of plans for a $20 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia...

What an @%%

75 posted on 01/10/2008 2:21:48 PM PST by nicmarlo
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To: RC2

So they can buy our weapons, silly ! :)


76 posted on 01/10/2008 2:22:52 PM PST by cinives (On some planets what I do is considered normal.)
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To: RC2
Israel cannot expect the rest of the world to protect them throughout eternity.

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.

77 posted on 01/10/2008 2:22:59 PM PST by itsahoot (Gingrich: "We don't have a peace process. We have a surrender process." (Duncan Hunter gets it.))
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To: ltc8k6

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?


78 posted on 01/10/2008 2:25:22 PM PST by RC2
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To: Wiz

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...


79 posted on 01/10/2008 2:25:58 PM PST by billmor
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To: SpinnerWebb

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.?

:-)


80 posted on 01/10/2008 2:26:47 PM PST by ltc8k6
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