For context, these remarks by President Bush during his press conference with Abu Mazen follow immediately after Bush's "Israel must ..." litany (quoted in my previous post, of which this one is more or less a continuation).
Any final status agreement must be reached between the two parties, and changes to the 1949 armistice lines must be mutually agreed to.
A viable two-state solution must ensure contiguity on the West Bank and a state of scattered territories will not work. There must also be meaningful linkages between the West Bank and Gaza.
This is the position of the United States today. It will be the position of the United States at the time of final status negotiations.
Now it's possible to overreact to this statement, as Hal Lindsey did over at World Net Daily:
The Israelis are reeling from the body blow delivered them by President Bush following his meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. In one pronouncement, Bush totally scuttled all the hard-fought, blood-bought gains Israel has made in the three wars forced upon her.
All peace negotiations and concessions by Israel in the pursuit of peace with the Muslim Nations and Palestinians since 1949 have been rendered null and void.
President Bush's astonishing and unexpected statement reversed long standing American policy. In his joint statement with Abbas, he declared that any final status changes in the peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians must be mutually agreed to on the basis of the 1949 armistice lines.
To my horror, this statement is the greatest betrayal of Israel committed by any American president in history.
Nonsense. But Lindsey does make a few points about the 1949 armistice lines that should be kept in mind when considering the actual implications of Bush's rash and ill-considered words.
Here is a map that shows the 1949 armistice line with Jordan, only one of several "1949 armistice lines" to which Bush could be (mis)understood to be referring. (More on that in a minute another day.) And here is a map of Jerusalem showing the de facto border with Jordan that existed from 1949 to 1967. There are actually a number of interesting maps at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs site, and a lot of informative commentary as well. But it's this map of Jerusalem today that I'd like to focus on right now.
Notice the orange line. Notice what is not included within the 1949 armistice lines: the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, including the Western Wall; the neighborhoods of Ramot, Ramat Eshkol, French Hill, Pisgat Ze'ev, Neve Yaakov, Gilo and, of course, Har Homa; and access to Mt. Scopus, now the main campus of Hebrew University, which was left isolated in 1949, with no "continguity" to the rest of Israel.
That's not to mention Ma'aleh Adumim, Kfar Etzion, Ariel and the other thriving Jewish communities outside of the area shown above (but shown here). And here's one more map to consider: Jewish communities lost in the War of Independence. Far from being accorded a "right to return" to these villages, any Jewish presence that exists at those locations today is called an "illegal settlement" or "colony" by the same folks who proclaim the right of Arabs to "return" to Haifa and Jaffa.
Regardless of President Bush's feeling that "it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949," he's now proclaimed that any changes to those lines must be agreed to by "both sides," and the U.S. will do nothing to "prejudice" the outcome one way or the other. Does that mean that all of Israel's concessions, negotiations and sacrifices since 1949 are "null and void?" Hardly. But it does mean that the President of the United States has somehow come to believe that the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter, Ramot and Neve Yaakov are the palestinians' to concede.
I think/hope he's in for a rude awakening on that score. How about you?
Shabbat Shalom.
