Using President Bush’s own statements and terminology, the author contends that Bush’s peace vision for Palestine, is the same as Israel’s: disconnected Bantustans and perpetual Israeli domination.
By Dr. Hassan Afif El-Hasan
Special to PalestineChronicle.com
"President Bush should be credit for perfecting the art of selling his vision on solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to his Arab allies. He learnt from his campaigning that a good political salesman should have a slogan. He discovered the magic one to market his vision to the Palestinians, “two state solution living side by side!!”.
He repeated it so many times on several occasions without trying to do anything about it, then he bragged that he was the first to promise the Palestinians a state. This is not the first empty slogan the Palestinians have heard. Palestinian leaders who applaud President Bush vision today sold the Oslo agreements repeatedly as “the peace of the brave”. What does Bush vision on Palestine entail?
Bush pledged on April 14, 2004 to support then Prime Minister Sharon promise that in any final peace agreement with the Palestinians the refugees would be denied the right of return to their homes in Israel and the large settlement blocks would be annexed to Israel because they had been “facts on the ground”.
Bush declared his vision for solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict “in the light of new realities on the ground (in the occupied West Bank), including already existing major Israeli population centers”. He said “it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status (Palestinian-Israeli) negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949”. This vision, to give Palestinians’ land to Israel without their approval, amounts to a second version of Balfour Declaration......"
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