Weekly Commentary: Here’s the evidence Mr. Kerry – Pres. Bush Did OK
Construction
Dr. Aaron Lerner 25 November 2015

When Secretary of State John Kerry claims that no American president ever
agreed to settlement construction he is either knowingly lying or profoundly
ignorant.

No I am not referring to:

“In 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.”
Letter from President Bush to Prime Minister Sharon Wednesday, April 14,
2004

That could be interpreted as the expectation that Ramat Eshkol, French Hill
and perhaps a few other Jewish Jerusalem neighborhoods would remain within
Israel in a final deal.

There’s no wiggle room for Mr. Kerry in the letter from Dov Weisglass Chief
of the Prime Minister's Bureau to Dr. Condoleezza Rice National Security
Adviser of that same day that was part of the package of exchanged letters:

“On behalf of the Prime Minister of the State of Israel, Mr. Ariel Sharon, I
wish to reconfirm the following understanding, which had been reached
between us:

1. Restrictions on settlement growth: within the agreed principles of
settlement activities, an effort will be made in the next few days to have a
better definition of the construction line of settlements in Judea and
Samaria [the West Bank]. An Israeli team, in conjunction with Ambassador
Kurtzer, will review aerial photos of settlements and will jointly define
the construction line of each of the settlements.”

That’s right: President Bush agreed to settlement construction WITHIN the
existing construction line of settlements. And this regardless of if they
were within the “settlement blocs” or isolated communities.

Its conceivable that within the framework of the Bush settlement
construction WITHIN the existing construction line one could increase the
number of families inside a community by a factor of 20 or even more as
existing single family homes were replaced by tall apartment buildings.

Why didn’t Israel follow through with the program?

On 28 October 2013, I asked Dov Weisglass that very same question.

Weisglass replied that back on 30 April 2003 Israel and the Bush
Administration agreed to the principle that settlement construction would be
limited to within the construction line of the settlements.

The two sides started to take practical measures and an American team
together with an Israeli team started to go over aerial photos and it turned
out that there were a lot of difficulties coming up with the edge of the
construction. As a result of this to the process was held up.

In the meantime, Weisglass explained, we reached the end of 2003 start of
2004 and we started talking about the Disengagement and the work on the
construction line was delayed.

This matter came to a head with the April 14, 2004 exchange of letters in
Washington that included his letter quoted above.

After that the teams returned to work but a difference in principle arose
between Ambassador Kurtzer and the Israelis regarding which settlements
would be included in the process.

We wanted, Weisglass noted, to start from East to West and not deal with the
large settlement blocs as we explained to the Americans that it was silly to
include them and put limits on development there as we already have a letter
(Bush April 14, 2004 letter to Sharon: "... In light of new realities on the
ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers...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.") showing
that we see eye to eye on the large settlement blocs

As the situation was sensitive and pressure great the question of belief of
the promise in the Bush letter about the large settlement blocs was
important for the belief of the public in the Disengagement.

We thought that the letter would even gain us support from settlers living
in the large settlement blocs.

So it was important to have public see that we have US support for the large
settlement blocs and this would have been questioned if at the same time we
would have an issue with construction in the large settlement blocs.

So we wanted to put off this matter

A large US team that was to come was cancelled – this was around Jewish New
Years September/October 2004. The formal excuse was the because of Jewish
New Years it was difficult to coordinate the visit of part of the delegation
that included Elliot Abrams.

The visit was cancelled and never renewed.

So explained Dov Weisglass.

Let me put it another way: the Sharon team thought that the “Bush supports
the settlement blocs”- that hinged on an amorphous sentence in a letter -
had so much potential PR value that they opted to sacrifice the much more
solid “Bush supports construction with the construction line of ALL
settlements”.

Back to John Kerry.

The Weisglass letter isn’t a secret document. It part of the exchange of
letters of April 14, 2004 that is in the public record.

So which is worse? For Mr. Kerry to be so poorly informed that he is
unaware of the letter or that he knows about the letter but lies.

One last question: why, when Kerry claims in a meeting with an Israeli
official that no American president agreed to settlement construction doesn’t
the Israeli official have a copy of the letter ready to pull out?
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Arab-Israeli relations

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