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Outgoing Ambassador Dan Kurtzer. (AP file)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners September 19, 2005 |
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The outgoing U.S. ambassador to Israel said in an interview broadcast Sunday that U.S. President George W. Bush intends to back a request by Israel to keep larger West Bank settlement areas under its control in a permanent peace agreement with the Palestinians.
According to a report in Haaretz, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, speaking to U.S. Jewish figures on Monday, pledged that the West Bank settlement city of Ma'aleh Adumim will be linked to Jerusalem. "Ma'aleh Adumim, the most beautiful town in the most beautiful area there -- it's really unbelievable -- will be connected to Jerusalem," Sharon declared.
Ma'aleh Adumim, several kilometers from Jerusalem, is one of the settlement blocs in question. The area known as E1, which links the cities, has been the focus of a flurry of reports over Israeli plans to build in the zone, reported Haaretz.
Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, who completed his term Friday, cited an April 2004 letter from Bush to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, setting out the U.S. position on settlements.
"The policy is exactly what the president said," Kurtzer said in the prerecorded interview. "In the context of a final status agreement, the United States will support the retention by Israel of areas with a high concentration of Israeli population."
Kurtzer's language went slightly further than the original Bush letter, which did not speak of Israel retaining territory it captured in the 1967 Middle East war but said only that a return to the prewar borders of 1949 was unlikely.
"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," Bush wrote in the letter handed to Sharon during a visit to Washington on April 14 last year.
In a letter he handed Bush in exchange, Sharon pledged to dismantle settlement outposts put up since March 2001 and limit expansion of existing settlements.
A senior Palestinian official, Saeb Erekat, said that the United States should remain unbiased in matters related to the final peace agreement between the sides.
"I believe this pre-empts and prejudges issues that are reserved for final status negotiations," Erekat said. "Any talk of pre-empting and prejudging is counterproductive to the peace process."
Kurtzer, who is leaving the State Department for an academic post, is to be succeeded by Richard H. Jones, who arrived in Israel on Sunday. Jones has served in his three-decade career in four Arab countries and speaks fluent Arabic, U.S. Embassy spokesman Stewart Tuttle said.
Jones told the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee he believes Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will rein in the terrorist group Hamas, as required in the U.S.-backed peace plan. Jones will present his credentials on Sept. 26, Tuttle said.
The AP contributed to this report.
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