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President George W. Bush (file)
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| By Israel Insider staff July 16, 2007 |
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President Bush is scheduled to give a speech Monday following PM Olmert's meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
The speech is expected to convey conditional support for a new PA "emergency government" under Salam Fayad, new prime minister. Bush hopes to use this opportunity as a platform for "activism" by his administration, a senior Israeli political source said.
"The president sees there is an opportunity there now to show the Palestinian people a choice between the kind of violence and chaos under Hamas in Gaza and the prospect, under President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayad, for an effective, democratic Palestinian state that can be on the way toward what we all want, which is a two-state solution -- a Palestinian homeland for the Palestinian people," U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley said Sunday on ABC's This Week, Haaretz reported.
According to sources, Bush also intends to make demands of the Israeli government.
"In the past, it had been clear who the good guys and the bad guys were, and so long as Yasser Arafat and [later] Hamas were in power in the Palestinian Authority," the senior political source said on Sunday. "Now, Bush needs to relate to the two sides as equals."
However many in Israel would not equate Israel's commitment to democracy with that of the Palestinian Authority under Abbas and Fayad.
In related news, the Bush administration is beginning to favor military action over diplomatic channels in response to the growing threat of a nuclear Iran. According to a report, a source in Washington said that, "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo, the Jerusalem Post reported.
According to the report, the US government prefers that Israel not strike Iran's nuclear facilities, despite its calls for Israel's destruction.
There has long been tension within the administration over how to respond to Iran's refusal to hault its nuclear program. The report states that nothing conclusive has been decided.
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