Obama may be looking to abandon 'secret' deal between the US

[MikeWB]

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2 ... ments.html

Obama may be looking to abandon 'secret' deal between the US and Israel on settlements

The Washington Post is reporting today that the Obama administration's desire to challenge Israeli settlement expansion is being made more difficult by a "secret" deal the the Bush Administration struck with Israel 2004. Glenn Kessler and Howard Schneider write that the Obama Administration may be trying to end the agreement:

[Netanyahu spokesman Mark] Regev said the Israeli government is relying on "understandings" between former president George W. Bush and former prime minister Ariel Sharon that some of the larger settlements in the occupied West Bank would ultimately become part of Israel, codified in a letter that Bush gave to Sharon in 2004. In an interview with The Washington Post last year, Sharon aide Dov Weissglas said that in 2005, when Sharon was poised to remove settlers from Gaza, the Bush administration arrived at a secret agreement -- not disclosed to the Palestinians -- that Israel could add homes in settlements it expected to keep, as long as the construction was dictated by market demand, not subsidies.

Elliott Abrams, a former deputy national security adviser who negotiated the arrangement with Weissglas, confirmed the deal in an interview last week. "At the time of the Gaza withdrawal, there were lengthy discussions about how settlement activity might be constrained, and in fact it was constrained in the later part of the Sharon years and the Olmert years in accordance with the ideas that were discussed," he said. "There was something of an understanding realized on these questions, but it was never a written agreement."

Regev said Israeli and U.S. negotiators are discussing the degree to which the terms of the 2004 letter will apply under the new administration, but U.S. officials indicated that Obama wants to move beyond the 2004 letter and hold Israel to its commitments under the road map.

The 2004 exchange of letters between Bush and Sharon (and affirmed by Congress) was a profound change to US policy in Israel/Palestine, and it received scant attention from the media at the time. We've been wondering since the Obama administration entered office if they were going to stick to this agreement, and George Mitchell seemed to indicate the administration would on his first visit to Israel as special envoy. It's good to see this may be getting reconsidered. Watch this great video from the AFSC on what this agreement would look like on the ground - it's clear that it would make any peace agreement impossible.

So far the Obama administration has changed the tone to US/Israeli relations, but has not really broken from the Bush administration policies in Israel/Palestine. Ending this agreement would be a good start.