As Prime Minister Ariel Sharon exchanges the view from his Sycamore Ranch for the Texas ranch where he will be meeting with President Bush on Monday, he is likely to come under renewed American pressure to make further withdrawals from areas in Judea and Samaria.
The first demand will probably be for Sharon to fulfill prior commitments to tear down the new Jewish communities that have been set up in Judea and Samaria since Sharon was elected Prime Minister in 2001. The government has stated its intention to start tearing down those outposts after the disengagement is completed this summer.
The next Bush demand is likely to be to ensure that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, including the city of Maaleh Adumim just to the east of Jerusalem, are not expanded. The Administration considers expansion of such communities to be at odds with American policy and the Road Map plan.
Bush told reporters on Air Force One, on his way back from the Pope’s funeral on Friday, that he will most certainly take up the issue of Maaleh Adumim with Sharon at their meeting on Monday. “What I say publicly, I say privately, and that is that the Road Map has clear obligations on settlements, and that we expect the prime minister to adhere to those obligations,” Bush said.
Sharon recently announced that he intends to go forward with a ten-year-old plan to build 3,500 housing units between Maaleh Adumim and Jerusalem, paving the way for territorial contiguity between the two cities. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice recently declared that the project was “at odds” with U.S. policy.
Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres tried allaying Vice President Dick Cheney’s displeasure over the project at a meeting last Thursday. Peres told Cheney that despite Sharon’s proclamation, Israel really does not intend to implement the plan any time soon.
But Maaleh Admumim and the outpost issue may be only small potatoes compared to what the U.S. will soon be demanding of Israel, says Arutz-7's Haggai Huberman. U.S. media, influential academics, and leading American opinion makers have been very critical of Sharon’s Maaleh Adumim proposal, Huberman reports. "They intend to use antagonism to that proposal, along with the impending disengagement from Gaza and Northern Samaria, to sway public opinion in favor of having the administration pressure Israel for substantial territorial withdrawals in Judea and Samaria, in order to make way for an independent Palestinian state," he says.
Huberman’s sources say the expulsion plan has severely undercut Israel’s claim to hold on to Jewish populated areas in Judea and Samaria. "Liberal circles in the United States that apparently have substantial impact on foreign policy - even under Republican administrations - assert that a unilateral Israeli withdrawal obviates the long-held Israeli claim that settlements contribute to Israel’s security, and prove that just the opposite is true."
The expulsions also weaken Israel’s moral claim, Americans will say, that the territory forms a part of the Jews’ ancient homeland, entitling the government to settle Israeli citizens there without annexing the territory.
Academic circles from such prominent schools as Harvard and M.I.T. claim that the disengagement weakens Israel's logical case for retaining settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria, Huberman reports.
The Israeli government claims that Bush’s intention, as stated in his letter to Sharon on April 14 last year, was to guarantee U.S. support for Israel's right to retain large settlement blocs. The reality on the ground, it is being said, might turn out to be very different, especially if Israel cannot come up with ethical or military reasons to keep these areas under Israeli control.
Once the outposts are removed, the U.S. will expect Israel to withdraw unilaterally from areas in Judea and Samaria that are not considered to be part of large settlement blocs. This could happen before the final-status negations are concluded, perhaps over the next year.
American policy makers are aware that the more Israel withdraws, the less it makes sense to the U.S. public, and to the world at large, to claim that other areas should be incorporated into Israel. In the end, therefore, the question of whether Bush promised or didn't promise might become a moot point.