Bush urges Israel to shelve West Bank plan
My cynicism is now official.
President Bush yesterday told Israeli Prime Minister Olmert that he did not accept Israel's right to unilaterally state her own borders and demanded that Olmert hold negotiations with Palestinian President Abbas.
This is entirely in line with everything that I have been arguing for weeks. So why the cynicism?
Because we have witnessed all this before. The US makes a demand, Israel ignores the demand, the US pretends it never made the demand in the first place.
This is the first case in all of history where the client state calls the shots and the superpower obediently follows it's orders.
The truth is that only two days ago Olmert was dismissing Abbas as "powerless", and saying that, "he is helpless. He is unable even to stop the minimal terror activities amongst the Palestinians."
Now we have Olmert promising, at American insistence, to meet with him; although the promise was cloaked in a sufficient number of caveats to guarantee any future summit's failure.
"I intend to exhaust every possibility to promote peace with the Palestinians according to the road map, and I extend my hand in peace to Mahmoud Abbas," Mr Olmert said. However, he was still sceptical talks could lead to a settlement.
Both men made a distinction between talks with Mr Abbas and any dealings with Hamas, which the US regards as a terrorist organisation. The distinction was underlined by a vote in the House of Representatives earlier yesterday to ban all assistance to the Palestinian Authority, and cut off diplomatic contacts with Hamas.
"Unfortunately, the rise of Hamas ... which refuses to recognise Israel's right to exist and regards terrorism as a legitimate tool, severely undermines the possibility of promoting a genuine peace process," Mr Olmert told reporters.
He also made clear there was a limit to Israel's patience. "We cannot wait indefinitely for the Palestinians to change."
Despite the US pressure to shelve his withdrawal plans for now, Mr Olmert was buoyed by a display of support by Mr Bush for "bold ideas".
Watch this space. The meetings with Abbas will be described as a failure and Israel's brave attempt to reach out will be applauded by the US sometime in the future.
The "bold ideas" will then be implemented.
The US are only complaining that Israel have not yet gone through with the artifice of attempting to find a multilateral solution, once they have performed sufficiently with this US requirement, the unilateral solution that was always going to happen will be put into place.
God, I am a cynic. But watch this space, this is exactly how this will play itself out.
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