Bush backs Sharon plan for Gaza, inflames Arab anger

9.30am

WASHINGTON - US President George W Bush broke with decades of US Middle East policy today by saying that Israel might keep some of the Arab land it captured in the 1967 war. Palestinians angrily rejected the statement and called on the United Nations to denounce it.

Bush's statement came after a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Bush also expressed support for Sharon's idea of a unilateral Israeli military withdrawal from the Gaza Strip -- part of the territory Israel has been occupying since the 1967 Six Day war.

"In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centres, 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 said during a news conference with Sharon.

For decades, through Republican and Democratic administrations, the United States has officially viewed Israeli settlements as obstacle to peace. Bush has now shifted to view at least some of them as a fait accompli.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie immediately denounced the statement as unacceptable.

"Bush is the first US president to give legitimacy to Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. We reject this, we will not accept it," he told reporters at his West Bank home.

"Nobody in the world has the right to give up Palestinian rights," he said.

Israel has planted some 120 settlements in the West Bank since it captured the area along with the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East war.

It has also ringed Jerusalem with large Jewish suburbs, some of which were partially built on occupied land.

Palestinian Negotiations Minister Saeb Erekat told CNN Bush's statement violated international law, which viewed the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights as temporary, pending a final peace settlement.

"Any assurances by the United States to Israel that will pre-empt issues under negotiation will be a major deviation from international law. ... The United Nations and all the world must stand firm against this," Erekat said.

Bush was likely referring in his statement to the large Jewish settlements Israel has built around Jerusalem and possibly also to some of the major enclaves it has carved out adjacent to the 1967 border.

Sharon, who in the late 1970s emerged as the architect of a plan to vastly expand the settlements, heads a right-wing party that views the West Bank as part of the Biblical territories of Judea and Samaria, given by God to the Jews.

There are around 230,000 Jewish settlers and 2.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank. Gaza is home to 1.3 million Palestinians and 7,500 settlers in isolated, fortified enclaves that would be evacuated under Sharon's plan.

Bush's statement had wide political ramifications at home and abroad. It may go down well with conservative and some Jewish voters in the US presidential election but was likely to inflame the Arab world and further complicate efforts to stabilise Iraq.

The statement and letters Bush and Sharon exchanged could go a long way toward helping the Israeli leader push his plan to scrap 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank through a binding vote in his Likud party on May 2.

"These are historic and courageous actions," Bush said about the Gaza withdrawal. "If all parties choose to embrace this moment, they can open the door to progress and put an end to one of the world's longest-running conflicts."

The president also appeared to negate any right of return of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel, saying they should be resettled in a future Palestinian state instead.

A beaming Sharon told Bush: "I was encouraged by your positive response and your support for my plan.

"In that context, you handed me a letter that includes very important statement regarding Israel security and its well-being as a Jewish state."

But Khaled al-Batsh of the militant group Islamic Jihad, one of several that has been waging a bloody campaign against Israeli soldiers and civilians for the past three years, called the agreement, "a declaration of war" against the Palestinian people. "Bush and Sharon will have to shoulder the responsibility for the new cycle of war," he said.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair welcomed Sharon's pledge to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and some settlements in the West Bank and said the international community should now "work together to seize this opportunity to inject new life into the peace process."

He did not refer in his statement to Bush's policy shift on the settlements.

Bush's policy shift comes as Israel pushes ahead with construction of a separation barrier that has pushed deep into West Bank land.

- REUTERS