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Did the Bush White House Agree to Settlement Growth?
[Middle East Forum] Steve Rosen - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is denying that there were understandings between the Bush Administration and the Sharon government that permitted some construction within settlements. She spoke on June 17 of an op-ed "Our former ambassador Dan Kurtzer has written...that lays out our position on that." On June 25, Elliot Abrams, who headed the Mideast team at the Bush White House and participated in the key discussions with Israeli officials about the settlements freeze issue, weighed in with an op-ed stating, "There were indeed agreements between Israel and the United States regarding the growth of Israeli settlements on the West Bank." A little history will help to explain the contradiction between Abrams and Kurtzer. Abrams and Steve Hadley, the Deputy National Security Adviser to Bush at the time, crafted the settlement growth understandings. Dan Kurtzer, then U.S. Ambassador to Israel, opposed them. He confirmed to Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post in April 2008 that he had opposed accepting an April 2004 letter from Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weissglas. "I thought it was a really bad idea," Kurtzer said. "It would legitimize the settlements, and it gave them a blank check." But the White House did accept the Weissglas letter. So these dueling op-eds by Kurtzer and Abrams are a continuation of a policy war within the Bush Administration.