What Didn't That Moron Screw Up?

Just when you thought you had a good grasp on all that President Bush had screwed up in his eight years in office all of a sudden a story like this comes out.

While in Washington, Netanyahu argued that Israel already dismantled settlements in the Gaza Strip, going beyond the road map, and was rewarded with the takeover of Gaza by the Hamas militant group and hundreds of rockets raining on Israeli towns, Israeli sources said. Still, shortly after he returned to Israel, the government tore down an unauthorized outpost, Maoz Esther. Israel is committed under the road map to remove about 26 such outposts, typically small groups of rudimentary structures with a few families. Settlers began rebuilding Maoz Esther almost immediately.


Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev said there are no plans for a full settlement freeze. "The issue of settlements is a final status issue, and until there are final status arrangements, it would not be fair to kill normal life inside existing communities," he said.

Regev said the Israeli government is relying on "understandings" between former president George W. Bush and former prime minister Ariel Sharon that some of the larger settlements in the occupied West Bank would ultimately become part of Israel, codified in a letter that Bush gave to Sharon in 2004. In an interview with The Washington Post last year, Sharon aide Dov Weissglas said that in 2005, when Sharon was poised to remove settlers from Gaza, the Bush administration arrived at a secret agreement -- not disclosed to the Palestinians -- that Israel could add homes in settlements it expected to keep, as long as the construction was dictated by market demand, not subsidies.

Elliott Abrams, a former deputy national security adviser who negotiated the arrangement with Weissglas, confirmed the deal in an interview last week. "At the time of the Gaza withdrawal, there were lengthy discussions about how settlement activity might be constrained, and in fact it was constrained in the later part of the Sharon years and the Olmert years in accordance with the ideas that were discussed," he said. "There was something of an understanding realized on these questions, but it was never a written agreement."

Regev said Israeli and U.S. negotiators are discussing the degree to which the terms of the 2004 letter will apply under the new administration, but U.S. officials indicated that Obama wants to move beyond the 2004 letter and hold Israel to its commitments under the road map. "The bottom line is we expect all the parties in the region to honor their commitments, and for the Israelis, that means a stop to settlements, as the president said," a senior administration official said.

So to recap President Bush four years ago entered into a secret agreement with Israel with no guidance from nor connsultation with Congress that was in direct conflict with his public pronouncements of being serious about peace in the Middle East. Thankfully so far President Obama has shown that he is indeed serioous about a two state solution between Israel in Palestine and he has pressed Bibi Netanyahu on halting the settlements as have members of the leadership in Congress, something that hasn’t happened in the past. But that doesn't change the fact that while we were fighting a war in Iraq that many in the Middle East felt was a war against Islam, here was our neocon President unilaterally giving concessions to Israel over land he had absolutely no right to grant them. Who in the hell in his Administration recommended that letter? Was it Colin Powell? Condi Rice? Dick Cheney? What possible benefit would have ever come from such an arrangement?

I think by now most of us realize that one of the major factors threatening our national security is continued unrest between Israel and Palestine and yet Bush effectively insured that not only would that unrest continue, it would probably get worse as the settlements keep expanding. Not only that he probably did more to undermine the more moderate Abbas leader and usher in Hamas just with that one “secret” agreement. Hell is it even legal for President Bush to enter into such an arrangement all on his own? That’s what the hell I want to know. Now lets be real here, Presidents of this country have a long history of allowing Israel more latitude than any of our other “allies” but what Bush did, in my opinion, went way beyond the pale. He had Condi Rice going to promote the “Annapolis” agreements all throughout the Middle East during his second term, knowing full well he already had undermiined those agreements all on his own. And now any road to a true lasting two state solution is made even more complicated than before. Tell me why any Arab countries would trust the US to be an honest broker in these negotiations now after hearing about this secret agreement.

Unbelievable.

Will The Media And The Politicians Ignore The Words Of Israel's Own Soldiers

I wonder if Michael Goldfarb over at the Weekly Standard will call these Israeli soldiers anti semites.

From Haaretz:

During Operation Cast Lead, Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property, say soldiers who fought in the offensive.

The soldiers are graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon. Some of their statements made on Feb. 13 will appear Thursday and Friday in Haaretz. Dozens of graduates of the course who took part in the discussion fought in the Gaza operation.

The speakers included combat pilots and infantry soldiers. Their testimony runs counter to the Israel Defense Forces' claims that Israeli troops observed a high level of moral behavior during the operation. The session's transcript was published this week in the newsletter for the course's graduates.

The testimonies include a description by an infantry squad leader of an incident where an IDF sharpshooter mistakenly shot a Palestinian mother and her two children. "There was a house with a family inside .... We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof," the soldier said.

"The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay, and he should hold his fire and he ... he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders."

According to the squad leader: "The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, closer than the lines he was told no one should pass. He shot them straight away. In any case, what happened is that in the end he killed them.

snip

The squad leader said he argued with his commander over the permissive rules of engagement that allowed the clearing out of houses by shooting without warning the residents beforehand. After the orders were changed, the squad leader's soldiers complained that "we should kill everyone there [in the center of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist."

The squad leader said: "You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it, but they won't say anything. To write 'death to the Arabs' on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It's what I'll remember the most."

The Grown Ups Are In Charge Now

I have to say that I am both surprised and heartened by the even handed approach President Obama took today on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. When he first started speaking on the subject I thought he was going to simply recite the stale rhetoric of the United States standing with Israel. But the money quote came at about 10:10

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"As part of a lasting ceasefire Gaza's border crossing should be opened to allow the flow of aid and commerce with an approrpriate monitoring regime with the international and Palestinian Authority participating."


If there is to be peace in that region both sides have to participate and the way for that to happen is for our nation to nudge both sides along. That President Obama is willing to state that openly shows that he is truly committed to getting the job done. And that is just another instance of change I can believe in!

What You Gone Do When The Worlds On Fire?

There is a must read posted at Huffington Post on this new military offensive by the Israelis in the Gaza strip. I will just excerpt the final paragraph but you really need to read the whole thing.

But there is a bigger picture - and it is staring at the incoming Obama administration. Today's events should be 'exhibit A' in why the next U.S. Government cannot leave the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to fester or try to 'manage' it - as long as it remains unresolved, it has a nasty habit of forcing itself onto the agenda. That can happen on terms dictated to the U.S. by the region (bad) or the U.S. can seek to set its own terms (far preferable). The new administration needs to embark upon a course of forceful regional diplomacy that breaks fundamentally from past efforts. A consensus of sorts is emerging in the U.S. foreign policy establishment that this conflict needs to be resolved - evidenced in the findings of a recent Brookings/Council of Foreign Relations Report or the powerful statements coming from elder statesmen like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, themselves building on the findings of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. It will require tenacity and bold ideas - in framing the solution, bringing in previously excluded actors, creating mechanisms to implement a deal (such as international forces) and utilizing the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative - but the alternative is far worse, its what we see today and it guarantees ongoing instability in a region of paramount importance to the United States.