In the end it was a speech worth waiting for. It delineated the correct goals of a lasting Arab-Israeli peace, and the true conditions for such a peace. For once, all of the Foggy Bottom equivocation was gone, and in a rarety of diplomatic parlance, honesty pervaded the message.
Bush on the relationship between Palestinian terror and Israeli occupation.
It is untenable for Israeli citizens to live in terror. It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation. And the current situation offers no prospect that life will improve. Israeli citizens will continue to be victimized by terrorists, and so Israel will continue to defend herself.
The message is clear - Palestinian terror is the cause of the Israeli re-occupation, not the other way around. The Palestinians, like all people, deserve to live without such occupation - if they are willing to live in peace with their neighbors.
Bush on the connection between a change in Palestinian leadership and a Palestinian state:
Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership, so that a Palestinian state can be born...And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East..... A Palestinian state will never be created by terror -- it will be built through reform. And reform must be more than cosmetic change, or veiled attempt to preserve the status quo. True reform will require entirely new political and economic institutions, based on democracy, market economics and action against terrorism.
According to the news reports Bush balanced his position conditioning Palestinian statehood upon reform by embracing the Arab position that Israel must fully withdrawal to the untenable '67 borders. Thus, according to the AP:
In his speech, Bush demanded Israel withdraw to positions it held on the West Bank two years ago and to stop building homes for Jews on the West Bank and in Gaza. Ultimately, he said, Israel should agree to pull all the way back to the lines it held before the 1967 Mideast war.
In his speech however, Bush merely reiterated the traditional U.S. position that while Israel should withdrawal from most of the West Bank, final status of the borders must take into account Israel's security interests.
This means that the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 will be ended through a settlement negotiated between the parties, based on U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, with Israeli withdrawal to secure and recognize[d] borders.
Finally, in the most stirring language of the speech, Bush proclaimed a vision of freedom and democracy throughout the Islamic world.
I have a hope for the people of Muslim countries. Your commitments to morality, and learning, and tolerance led to great historical achievements. And those values are alive in the Islamic world today. You have a rich culture, and you share the aspirations of men and women in every culture. Prosperity and freedom and dignity are not just American hopes, or Western hopes. They are universal, human hopes. And even in the violence and turmoil of the Middle East, America believes those hopes have the power to transform lives and nations.
The hard part of course is to move from these hopeful words to a better reality. However, it is wrong to discount the importance of vision in foreign policy. For all the nuance and knowledge that Bush the Elder had, he squandered it for wont of a vision. This speech shows that at least with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, W. has the vision his father lacked, and may leave a far more positive legacy on the world stage.
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