Zvi Bar’el analyzes Bush’s support for Sharon’s “disengagement” plan:
“The letters exchanged between Bush and Sharon are not a new accord or groundbreaking political program. They are letters of commentary on reality that regard the Palestinians as an object rather than a subject, as a bone stuck in the throat of the separation fence, of the settlements and of Israel’s final border. With this type of commentary, the two friends had to exchange a wink in light of the blatant contradiction between Bush’s statement that “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 the very next sentence, which states, “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.” If this sentence were not in Bush’s letter, one could dismiss this as just another slip of the tongue by the president. These two contradictory sentences guarantee that the conflict will continue forever, because there cannot be mutual agreement on the reality that current exists in the territories, especially when one of the two sides is determining this reality.”
