Bush ends trip to Israel, on to Arab states

Perhaps, one can see the human side of Bush, instead of the Political side.[q url="http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=231672"]
JERUSALEM -- U.S. President George W. Bush's eyes welled up with tears while visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial on Friday.

 

The president's visit to the museum, which commemorates the deaths of six million European Jews during Adolf Hitler's reign of terror, was the last official stop on a whirlwind three-day visit to Israel and the West Bank where Mr. Bush tried to give fresh impetus to the shaky Middle East peace process he formally initiated in November at Annapolis, Md.

"I wish as many people as possible would come to this place," said Mr. Bush, who also visited Yad Vashem when he was governor of Texas. "It is a sobering reminder that evil exists and a call that when evil exists we must resist it."

During the visit, a museum official said Mr. Bush had told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. should have bombed Auschwitz to stop the killing at the concentration camp there. As he left Yad Vashem, the president wrote in the visitors book, "God bless Israel, George Bush."

It was an affirmation of Mr. Bush's belief in and support for the Jewish state, which he promised to return to in May when it celebrates its 60th anniversary. Such a trip would undoubtedly provide the president with another chance to keep the Israelis and Palestinians speaking to each other.

During this visit, designed to help reach a comprehensive Middle East peace agreement during Bush's last year in office, the president seemed more supportive of Palestinian demands than ever. He called for an end to Israel's 40-year occupation of the West Bank and for a Palestinian state that was not made of "Swiss cheese" because of Jewish settlements in its midst.

Bush also pleased his Israeli hosts by reaffirming his belief that major settlement blocs in the West Bank should become part of Israel upon the creation of a Palestinian state. He and Ms. Rice sent mixed messages about whether Israel should only be obliged to tear down settler outposts in the West Bank or stop all construction by settlers there and in parts of Jerusalem which Palestinians claim as their future capital.

Mr. Bush's emerging peace formula includes undefined compensation mechanisms but no right of return for the original Palestinian refugees, and their descendants, who have sought to reclaim homes in what has been Israel since 1948. The president also called for a halt to rocket attacks from Gaza, which was lost to Hamas -- an extremist Islamic movement that does not recognize Israel's right to exist -- when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's ruling Fatah faction was routed in fighting last June.

"Gaza is the elephant in the room," Mark Regev, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman, said during a briefing Friday. "In many ways what is going on in Gaza is the Achilles's heel of the whole process. . .

"There is no three-state solution. We have to see the Palestinian government in control of Gaza."

The only possible explanation for the rocket attacks by Hamas and other groups in Gaza, which most western countries consider to be terrorist organizations, was "nihilism," Mr. Regev said, referring to a perverse doctrine that calls for destruction simply for the sake of destruction.

Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader in Gaza, said Mr. Bush had used his visit to give Israel "all the required pledges to solidify its occupation" and that Palestinians would never give up the right of return for refugees.

The Israelis and Abbas government have agreed to begin negotiating core issues next week such as the borders of a future Palestinian state, the future of Jerusalem and the right of return of refugees. But even before solving these extremely tricky, emotive issues, the Annapolis, Md., process has been in constant danger of collapse because of fierce bickering over unfulfilled Israeli and Palestinian "road map" obligations regarding settlements and security.

Throughout the meetings with Mr. Bush this week, Israel repeatedly brought up the threat to its citizens from rockets launched from Gaza and the greater dangers posed by recent qualitative improvements in the rockets' range. Mr. Olmert warned that there could be no peace agreement as long as such attacks continued.

The Palestinians, for their part, repeatedly demanded that Israel stop construction of Jewish homes in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. They also called for an end to the hundreds of road blocks established by Israeli security forces in the West Bank.

The second "elephant in the room," during Mr. Bush's visit was Iran. Much of the time that Mr. Olmert and his senior ministers had with the president was taken up with Israeli concerns about Iran's nuclear intentions and what might be done about to thwart them.

While no details of these were provided, Mr. Regev said, "the Israeli and Americans are on the same page as regards the Iranian threat ... We cannot accept a nuclear-armed Iran."

Before flying to Kuwait to begin a five-day tour of four Gulf sheikdoms, where Iran will be the main topic of conversation, Mr. Bush had his presidential helicopter briefly alight at biblical sites at Capernaum and the Mount of Beatitudes in the Galilee where Christ is said to have given his Sermon on the Mount.

The devout evangelical Christian was shown around these holy places by Catholic and Orthodox friars, nuns and a bishop who gave him a statue inscribed with the words of St. Matthew "Blessed are those who are peacemakers for they will be called the children of God."

Few Israelis and Palestinians think there is any chance that Mr. Bush's one-year timetable for a peace deal will be met. Asked about this by the BBC, former British prime minister Tony Blair, who is a special envoy to the Middle East for the U.S., the UN, the European Union and France, said that peace was possible by January 2009 but only if the principals involved were prepared to make "difficult compromises."