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RAMALLAH, West Bank: US President George W. Bush said on Thursday
that he believed a Middle East peace treaty would be signed by the
time he leaves office in a year, despite skepticism among Israelis
and Palestinians.
Bush, making his first visit to the occupied
Palestinian territories, also voiced confidence about the emergence
of an independent Palestinian state but said it had to be
contiguous.
“Swiss cheese isn’t going to work when it
comes to the territory of a state,” he said at a press conference
alongside Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in the West Bank
political capital Ramallah.
“In order for there to be lasting peace...
Abbas and Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert have to come together and
make tough choices and I’m convinced they will,” he said.
“I believe it’s going to happen, that
there’s going to be a signed peace treaty by the time I leave
office.”
Bush’s talks in Ramallah followed meetings
with Israeli leaders on Wednesday at the start of a Middle East trip
aimed at advancing peace negotiations revived amid great fanfare six
weeks ago but which have stumbled since.
The leader of the world’s biggest superpower,
on only the second trip to the West Bank by a sitting US president,
had been forced to go by road to Ramallah after thick fog grounded
his Marine One helicopter.
The city was under virtual curfew, with about
4,000 law-enforcement officers fanned out across Ramallah and all
cars banned.
Bush nevertheless faces a difficult task to win
over the hearts and minds of Palestinians, who are deeply skeptical
about his ability to be an even-handed peace broker as Israel’s
closest ally.
“I don’t believe he will do anything for the
Palestinians,” said Mohammad Khaldi, a 64-year-old Ramallah
resident. “If he wanted to really do something, he had six years
for that and he didn’t do a single thing.”
The latest negotiations bogged down because of
discord over Jewish settlement expansion and Israeli-Palestinian
violence.
The split in Palestinian society has complicated
the peace efforts since Hamas’ bloody takeover of the impoverished
Gaza Strip in June that has left Abbas in charge only in the West
Bank.
And after his talks with Olmert on Wednesday,
Bush warned that violence against Israel from Gaza had to stop
before a peace deal could be sealed.
Although Bush told Israel to dismantle wildcat
settlement outposts in the West Bank, he did not call for a complete
halt to settlement activity, as repeatedly demanded by the
Palestinians.
Palestinian concerns about intensifying Israeli
assaults against militants, which have killed about 100 people,
mostly gunmen, since the relaunching of peace talks in late
November, were also due to top Thursday’s talks.
The Palestinian Authority argues that the
operations undermine its efforts to reassert its authority in the
wake of the Hamas takeover of Gaza. Israel argues they are needed to
prevent attacks on its territory.
Abbas is hoping Bush’s visit also boost him in
the standoff with the Islamist Hamas movement, which Washington and
Israel brand a terror group.
But the Palestinian leader’s lack of control
in Gaza was underlined on Wednesday when thousands of Hamas
supporters joined a mass rally against the visit, branding Bush the
“butcher of the world” and brandishing pictures of the US leader
with blood dripping from his mouth.
A poll published in a Hebrew newspaper on
Thursday also found that 77 percent of Israelis were doubtful that
Bush’s visit would advance peace talks.
-- AFP
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