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Fuel Crisis Halts UN Aid to Gaza •
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Israelis Claim Secret Agreement With US
By Glenn Kessler
The Washington Post
Thursday 24 April 2008
Americans insist no deal made on settlement
growth.
A letter that President Bush personally delivered to then-Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon four years ago has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president's
efforts to forge a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians during his
last year in office.
Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli prime minister, said this week that Bush's
letter gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements
that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush's peace plan
officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements across Palestinian territories
on the West Bank. In an interview this week, Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weissglas,
said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a
secret agreement reached between Israel and the United States in the spring
of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza.
U.S. officials say no such agreement exists, and in recent months Rice has
publicly criticized even settlement expansion on the outskirts of Jerusalem,
which Israel does not officially count as settlements. But as peace negotiations
have stepped up in recent months, so has the pace of settlement construction,
infuriating Palestinian officials, and Washington has taken no punitive action
against Israel for its settlement efforts.
Israeli officials say they have clear guidance from Bush administration officials
to continue building settlements, as long as it meets carefully negotiated criteria,
even though those understandings appear to contradict U.S. policy.
Many experts say new settlement construction undermines the political standing
of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas - who is to meet with Bush
today at the White House - and adds to Palestinian cynicism about the peace
process. Palestinians view the settlements as an Israeli effort to claim Palestinian
lands, and in a meeting yesterday with Rice, Abbas said settlement construction
was "one of the greatest obstacles" to a peace deal.
U.S. and Israeli officials privately argue that Israel has greatly restricted
settlement growth outside the settlements it hopes to retain in a peace deal
with the Palestinians, and Olmert has said Israel has stopped building new settlements
and confiscating Palestinian lands.
Housing starts - not counting the Jerusalem settlements - have declined 33
percent since 2003, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. But
officials say it is politically damaging for Olmert to admit that, so instead
he publicly emphasizes that he is adding to the settlements, which now house
about 450,000 Israelis.
"It was clear from day one to Abbas, Rice and Bush that construction would
continue in population concentrations - the areas mentioned in Bush's 2004
letter," Olmert declared in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth
Ahronoth, published Sunday. "I say this again today: Beitar Illit will
be built, Gush Etzion will be built; there will be construction in Pisgat Ze'ev
and in the Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem," referring to new settlement
expansion plans. "It's clear that these areas will remain under Israeli
control in any future settlement."
In a key sentence in Bush's 2004 letter, the president stated, "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."
In a companion letter to "reconfirm" U.S.-Israeli understandings,
Weissglas wrote Rice that restrictions on the growth of settlements would be
made "within the agreed principles of settlement activities," which
would include "a better definition of the construction line of settlements"
on the West Bank. A joint U.S.-Israeli team would "jointly define the construction
line of each of the settlements."
Weissglas said that the letter built upon a prior understanding between then-Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, which would
allow Israel to build up settlements within existing construction lines. But
Powell denied that. "I never agreed to it," he said in an e-mail.
Daniel Kurtzer, then the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said he argued at the time
against accepting the Weissglas letter. "I thought it was a really bad
idea," he said. "It would legitimize the settlements, and it gave
them a blank check." In the end, Kurtzer said the White House never followed
up with the plan to define construction lines. "Washington lost interest
in it when it became clear it would not be easy to do," he said.
National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, at a news briefing in January,
suggested that Bush's 2004 letter was aimed at helping Sharon win domestic approval
for the Gaza withdrawal. "The president obviously still stands by that
letter of April of 2004, but you need to look at it, obviously, in the context
of which it was issued," he said.
Weissglas said that in 2005, when Sharon was poised to remove settlers from
Gaza, the Bush administration made 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. He
said the agreement was necessary because Sharon needed the support of municipal
leaders in the main West Bank settlements. The settlement leaders, he said,
focused on the "inner contradiction" of Bush's letter, mainly that
it made no sense to have a settlement freeze in places that Bush said would
become part of Israel.
Weissglas said he then negotiated a "verbal understanding" with deputy
national security adviser Elliott Abrams that would permit new construction
in those key settlements; Rice and Sharon then approved the Weissglas-Abrams
deal. "I do not recall that we had any kind of written formulation,"
Weissglas said.
"There is no understanding," said White House National Security Council
spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
Indeed, as settlement starts soared after the Middle East peace conference
in Annapolis in November, Rice said "the United States doesn't make a distinction"
among settlement locations.
Powell said that in 2004, he did not anticipate that Bush's letter would be
perceived as a green light by Israel for adding to the settlements. "I
consistently spoke against settlement growth, but as you know all I could do
is talk against it," Powell said. "There would be no consequences
and there still aren't."
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Fuel Crisis Halts UN Aid to Gaza
BBC News
Thursday 24 April 2008
The United Nations has said it will have to suspend its humanitarian work in
the Gaza Strip within hours unless it receives fresh fuel supplies.
Assistant Secretary General Angela Kane said the distribution of food aid to
650,000 refugees and the collection of sewage from 500,000 would cease.
Israeli sanctions imposed in an attempt to force the Palestinian group Hamas
to stop rocket fire have caused shortages.
But Israel says Hamas is deliberately preventing fuel from entering.
It says there are a million litres of fuel at a border terminal.
Supplies "Exhausted"
In a briefing to the Security Council, Ms Kane said Gaza had suffered "heightened
humanitarian distress" caused by closed border crossings with Israel and
Egypt, the shortage of basic food and commodities, poor water supplies and sanitation.
More than 80% of Gaza's population rely on humanitarian assistance, with UN
food aid going to about 1.1 million people. A high proportion of them are children.
But Ms Kane warned that such assistance was now at risk of suspension because
of the restrictions on vehicle fuel deliveries, which were tightened by Israel
after Palestinian militants attacked the Nahal Oz fuel terminal earlier this
month.
There have been no deliveries of petrol since 18 March and no deliveries of
ordinary diesel since 2 April, according to UN officials.
"[The UN relief agency] Unrwa's fuel supplies will be exhausted on 24
April, and in an effort to save fuel, Unrwa has prioritised food distribution,
solid waste removal, and sewage projects," she told the Security Council
on Wednesday.
"Unless petrol is allowed in, Unrwa will discontinue its food assistance
to 650,000 refugees, as well as its garbage collection services, which benefit
half a million Gazans," she added.
"Another 500,000 Gazans are already living in 12 municipalities without
any solid waste management capacity - largely due to the lack of fuel."
Hospitals and clinics will also run out of fuel within a week, she warned.
Strike
The fuel shortages have been compounded since 7 April by a strike by Gaza's
fuel syndicate, which has been refusing to pick up about 1 million litres that
Israel has pumped into the Nahal Oz fuel terminal, saying the quantity is insufficient.
The boycott has not affected industrial diesel supplies to Gaza's main power
station, which was within hours of shutting down on Wednesday morning until
Israel agreed to allow deliver 1 million litres - enough to generate electricity
for three days.
A spokesman for the Israeli government, Mark Regev, told the BBC that it was
Hamas that was causing the fuel and humanitarian problems, not Israel.
"You have a situation where the Hamas regime in Gaza is deliberately holding
up supplies for its own political reasons, which are difficult to understand,"
he said.
"But the truth is there's a very consistent pattern here. The oil terminal
itself was deliberately targeted by Hamas just a few days ago, that was the
second attack in that vicinity in a very short period of time," he added.
"The terrorist regime in Gaza is deliberately attacking the crossings
that supply the Gaza people with these important supplies."
On a visit to Gaza on Wednesday, the UN special envoy Robert Serry, condemned
the militant attacks, but also described Israel's policies "collective
punishment".
A UN Security Council meeting ended shortly after Ms Kane's statement, when
Western representatives walked out in protest at comments made by the Libyan
representative, Giadalla Ettalhi, who likened Gaza to a Nazi death camp.
Mr Ettalhi made the remark during a discussion on a draft statement expressing
concern at the humanitarian situation in the coastal territory.
"A number of Council members were dismayed by the approach taken by Libya
and do not believe that such language helps advance the peace process,"
British official Karen Pierce said of the rare protest.
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