Minister Landau - Media Should Read The English Texts

Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 15 April 2004

Speaking in a live interview on Israel Radio this morning, Minister Uzi
Landau noted that President Bush's statements have no standing as a
permanent American commitment. Landau listed a series of previous American
presidential commitments that have not been honored - including a promised
ban on the deployment of American made Saudi F-15s in Tabuk near Eilat.

President Bush made a veiled reference to the limits that there are to his
statements during the press conference last night when he remarked that
"when you have a government where the person is bigger than the
institutions, that government will inevitably fail. It's when the
institutions are bigger than the people that you're able to have continuity
and people's hopes and aspirations realized, and peace". In America the
institutions are bigger than the people - presidential commitments only have
a binding status under the U.S. Constitution if they are approved by a
two-thirds majority of the Senate.

Landau pointed out that the Bush letter made no reference to Israel's 14
points about the roadmap thus leaving the roadmap with its fatal flaws
(under the roadmap the Quartet decides if a Palestinian state should be
formed in evacuated areas based on what it considers the relative
performance of the Palestinians as compared to the Israeli performance - the
Palestinians are not actually required to successfully complete any
security-related operations. The state is formed without requiring either
Israeli consent or Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The Bush statements
also did not explicitly link the Phase II Palestinian state to the
successful completion of security operations - thus essentially rendering
meaningless his statement regarding Israeli control of movement between Gaza
and the outside world as [even while Bush remains president and opts to
honor his words] it only holds until a Phase II Palestinian state ).

Landau said that it is important to read the actual text of the letter in
English. Reading from the text of the Bush letter ("It seems clear that an
agreed, just, fair, and realistic framework for a solution to the
Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to
be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling
of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.") Landau complained
that the sentence was being mistranslated in Hebrew reports to read "and not
in Israel" when the statement reads only "rather than in Israel".

It should be noted that while the media is presenting the Bush letter as
some kind of commitment regarding the final status of the settlement blocs
that Bush, who was careful to say in the press conference that "[T]he United
States will not prejudice the outcome of final status negotiations. That
matter is for the parties," in no way indicated that what would happen with
the blocs except to predict in his letter that they will have a value at the
negotiating table :

"[I]n light of new realities on the ground, including already existing
major Israeli populations centers, 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, and all previous efforts to negotiate a
two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to
expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of
mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities."

Mr. Bush may consider it "realistic", for example, for the existence of the
major Israeli population centers to be such a significant negotiating card
that Israel can trade them for the French Hill and Ramat Eshkol
neighborhoods in Jerusalem - occupied territory in American eyes.

As for the situation in evacuated Gaza, President Bush sees building up the
"capacity and will of Palestinian institutions to fight terrorism"."working
together with Jordan, Egypt, and others in the international community." The
caveat "will", in particular within the context of Egyptian efforts, refers
to plans to co-opt the terrorists by recruiting them into the Palestinian
security forces. The presence of "Jordan, Egypt, and others in the
international community" on the ground will provide the Palestinians with a
formidable human shield to protect them from Israeli security operations.

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
Website: http://www.imra.org.il