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Peace Process

Bush puts shoulder to Mideast 'peace' wheel


By Stan Goodenough
July 17, 2007

US President George W. Bush pledged, on winning his second term in office, that he would do everything in his power to make the creation of a Palestinian state possible before leaving the White House at the end of next year.

On Monday, frustrated by the lack of progress towards this goal, the American leader announced a plan to jump-start the long-stalled land-for-peace process.

Apart from the fact that his presidency is running out of time, Bush believes the break between the Hamas and Fatah "Palestinian" terrorist organizations is an opportunity to capitalize on.

Speaking at the White House, he said he would convene an international peace conference in the autumn to which Israel, the Palestinian Arabs and some Arab states would be invited.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - who many charge with pushing Bush towards a Palestinian state when other counselors advised against it - will preside.

Bush said only those Arab countries that support establishing a Palestinian state on the Jews' historical homeland would be invited to attend.

Today was a "moment of clarity for all Palestinians,'' he said. Now was ''a moment of choice.''

Since 2002 the president has nurtured a "vision of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace." The Palestinian state is to be a new - never before existing - entity established on ancient Jewish lands.

Administration officials who questioned this approach, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, have been overruled and removed from their posts.

In a speech Israeli analysts described as having Rice's "imprint" on "almost every detail," Bush praised veteran terrorist and PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas for working to build modern democratic institutions.

He favorably contrasted Abbas, who is also the chairman of the blood-drenched Fatah faction of the PLO - the arm responsible for killing more Jews than any other "Palestinian" group in the Oslo War (second intifada) - with the other terrorist group, the Hamas.

The latter, Bush said, were devoted to "extremism" and "murder."

President Bush went on to pledge more money to Abbas' "government" and called for other countries to do the same.

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