US pledges support to Mideast peace process
Foreign Desk Report

WASHINGTON—The United States pledged full support to the revived Israeli-Palestinian peace process, warning that failure would lead to more bloodshed amid doubts that a deal can be reached next year.
US President George W. Bush made the promise Wednesday after meeting with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders at the White House, after the two sides committed to sealing a peace deal by the end of 2008.
But the problems faced by the two sides were highlighted by a new Israeli air raid and another attack on the Gaza Strip in which four Hamas activists were killed. Hamas has insisted that Palestinians will not be bound by any decisions take at the Middle East peace conference in the United States this week. But Bush — speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas quietly looking at the White House — declared: “I wouldn’t be standing here if I didn’t believe that peace was possible, and they wouldn’t be here either if they didn’t think peace was possible.”
“One thing I’ve assured both gentlemen is that the United States will be actively engaged in the process,” Bush pledged. “We will use our power to help you as you come up with the necessary decisions to lay out a Palestinian state that will live side by side in peace with Israel.” Abbas said the US-hosted peace conference this week had put back “on track” prospects for an independent Palestinian state. “The result we reached makes us optimistic. We came with an aim and we think we have attained it,” Abbas told reporters.
The US president, who called the conference “a hopeful beginning,” did not invite Abbas or Olmert to speak at the White House Rose Garden event, and the three leaders did not shake hands. It was in sharp contrast to the ebullient 1993 handshake on the nearby South Lawn between US President Bill Clinton, late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, and late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Abbas and Olmert — like Bush, politically weakened — were to return home to confront sharp skepticism from friends and foes alike over the latest peace drive launched at the conference in Annapolis, Maryland. A poll published Thursday in the Israeli daily Haaretz found that 42 percent of Israelis believe the conference was a failure, while 17 percent thought otherwise. The rest were undecided.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said after peace talks in Washington that failure to negotiate a two-state solution with the Palestinians could threaten Israel’s long-term survival.
A day after Israel and the Palestinians formally relaunched negotiations, Olmert’s comments appeared in Thursday’s Haaretz newspaper on the 60th anniversary of the passing of a U.N. resolution to partition British-run Palestine between Jews and Arabs — a two-state solution that still eludes them. “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights ... then, as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished,” Olmert said.
For 40 years, Israel has occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, home to 4 million Arabs. However, to annex the territory and its people would, Israeli leaders say, undermine the Jewish nature of Israel, which has a population now of 7 million.
Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed at a conference hosted by U.S. President George W. Bush this week to try to forge a peace treaty and create a Palestinian state by the end of 2008 — a time scale skeptics say is too ambitious.
Both leaders are weak. Olmert is embroiled in a series of corruption scandals and faces resistance to concessions from within his coalition, while Abbas is locked in a power struggle with Hamas Islamists who control Gaza, which he wants for a future state, and have vowed to undermine peace talks. The Israeli and Palestinian public are also skeptical. A poll in Israel’s top-selling daily showed 83 percent of Israeli respondents did not expect a peace deal within a year, while many Palestinians doubt Abbas will protect their interests.