"Reports of a dispute between Israel and the US are a storm in a teacup. Anyone trying to drive a wedge between us on the issue of the large settlement blocks has failed. Moreover, the US commitment to the population centers has only strengthened, due to this failed effort," Israel Ambassador to the US Daniel Ayalon told "Globes" last night.
Ayalon's comments were further reinforcement of the feverish effort by Israel and the US to take the sting out of comments by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer on Friday, as well as statements by Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Adam Ereli mid-week, implying that the Bush administration had apparently abandoned one of two key commitments in a letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dated April 14, 2004.
The letter states, "it would be unrealistic to expect" that negotiations for a permanent settlement would ignore "new facts on the ground, including the existence of large Israeli settlement blocks."
This sentence is the foundation on which Sharon is building the justification for the initiative to disengage from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria. The US comments therefore aroused the ire of the Prime Minister's Office. On Friday, Jerusalem warned Washington that undermining the foundation would damage support for the disengagement plan in the long term, and lead to the failure of the budget vote in Knesset in the immediate term.
In the messages, Israel called on the US to unequivocally confirm by public statements that the Bush administration would continue keep its commitment that Israel could hold onto the large population centers in the territories. Ayalon was at the center of the contacts with the administration. Washington quickly agreed to Israel's requests. Ayalon received "a solid promise", as he put it, from two senior administration officials that the Bush administration had not withdrawn its support for the principle for continued Israeli control over the large population blocks.
Ayalon said, "Administration officials told me that Bush's written promises to Sharon were solid and absolute." He added that one senior official had told him, "You know Bush. He means what he says, and anyone who tries to sow confusion in an effort to sabotage the disengagement plan is doomed to fail."
Diplomatic sources told "Globes", "The Americans understand that it's impossible to lower the boom (on construction) at one blow. They understand that there is life in the settlements. However, they oppose deviations from the settlements' outline plans. For its part, Israel has never agreed to a total freezing of construction of settlements. The Americans want to reach an agreement on the subject, and talks with the Americans are continuing."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on March 27, 2005