Bush Embraces Abbas

[ScreamingEagle]

What is Bush doing?

President Bush embraced Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday as a courageous democratic reformer and bolstered his standing at home with $50 million in assistance to improve the quality of life in Gaza.

Abbas, the first top Palestinian leader to visit the White House during Bush's presidency, said that Palestinians were "in dire need to have freedom" from Israeli control and that the need for U.S. help was urgent. He spoke just weeks before scheduled parliamentary elections in which his supporters are vying against the militant group Hamas.

"Time is becoming our greatest enemy," Abbas said toward the end of a three-day visit during which he projected himself as the peaceful alternative to Yasser Arafat and depicted the Palestinians as long suffering at the hands of Israel. Arafat, who died last November, was never invited to the White House by Bush.

Laying claim to all the land the Arabs lost to Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, including east Jerusalem, Abbas said, "It is time for our people, after many decades of suffering and dispossessions, to enjoy living in freedom on their own land."

The boundaries of a future Palestinian state should be those that existed before the 1967 war, he said, meaning before Israel captured east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

Bush, at a joint news conference in the sunlit Rose Garden, lent a measure of support to the Palestinians' territorial demands. He said Israel needed Palestinian consent to retain land the Arabs lost 38 years ago.

Any of the changes Israel made in expanding its boundaries since the end of the 1948 war for independence "must be mutually agreed to," Bush said. And he said Israel must remove illegal makeshift outposts from the West Bank and stop expanding Jewish settlements.

Notably, the president did not repeat the support he voiced during a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last year for Israel retaining large settlements on the West Bank near Jerusalem.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/05/26/national/w141223D01.DTL

 

[GotZoom]

What is Bush doing?

Pissing off.....how many people...

Let's see......