Bush Backs Israel on West Bank
In Policy Shift, President Says Some Disputed Settlements Should Remain
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 15, 2004
President Bush yesterday endorsed Israel's claim to parts of the West Bank seized in the 1967 Middle East war and asserted that Palestinian refugees cannot expect to return to their homes inside Israel, an explicit shift in U.S. policy immediately attacked by Palestinian political leaders.
Standing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the White House, Bush said it would be "unrealistic" to return to the region's prewar boundaries, affirming that some large Israeli settlements long considered illegal by American and international diplomats would be allowed to remain.
Bush stopped short of specifying which settlements Israel could keep, but, in publicly backing an Israeli strategy developed without Palestinian input, he set aside years of U.S. policy that deemed the West Bank settlements obstacles to peace in the region. The shape of the border and the fate of refugees were to be settled in final negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.
The new U.S. approach is aimed at breaking a three-year stalemate in the peace process marked by deadly violence, reprisals and deepening despair. Bush administration officials said they concluded the best hope of jump-starting the process was to embrace Sharon's unilateral
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