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Posted at 8:35pm on Nov. 28, 2007 "Occupation" and a Lack of Defensible Borders: President Bush uses the stage at Annapolis to side with Israel’s enemies

The Quixotic Quest for Legacy Qontinues

By Jeff Emanuel

The Temple Mount, dominated by the Golden Dome of the Rock, and Old Jerusalem, taken from the Mount of Olives to the East. The 'peace agreement' proposed by President Bush at Annapolis would transfer sovereignty over the Temple Mount and over East Jerusalem to the Palestinian government
(photograph by Jeff Emanuel)

As predicted earlier this week (and as deconstructed today by my colleague Dan McLaughlin), President Bush -- formerly (and arguably) the strongest supporter of Israel to inhabit the White House in years -- used his address at Tuesday's Annapolis Conference on Palestinian Statehood to renege on his 2004 promise of "defensible borders" to the then-Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, and to demand that the Jewish state retreat to its pre-1967 borders as a show of good faith in its peace negotiations with the Palestinian government.

Three years ago, Bush wrote to Sharon that "as part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders." He continued:

In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.

Read on.

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