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August 15, 2003/Av 17 5763, Vol. 55, No. 51
Israel, U.S. differ on key issues
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - The way top Israeli officials tell it, ties between Jerusalem and Washington have never been better.
They point to the relaxed camaraderie of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's late July meeting with President Bush at the White House, which they describe as their best ever.
"The two leaders are on the same wavelength on all the big issues," a close Sharon aide told JTA.
For all the upbeat talk, however, the Sharon-Bush meeting revealed at least three major issues on which Israel and the United States are divided and could clash further down the road:
- Construction of the Israeli security fence, which Bush called "a problem," and over which his administration is threatening to cut promised loan guarantees to Israel
- The concept of a settlement freeze, which Israel and the United States interpret differently
- The timetable for the Palestinian Authority to dismantle terrorist groups
According to Israeli officials, Bush's unease over the security fence stems from a fear that it could compromise his vision of Israeli and Palestinian states living side by side in peace.
For the vision to become a workable reality, the Palestinian state, in Bush's view, "must be viable." A fence cutting into Palestinian territory and disrupting territorial contiguity could destroy that viability, Bush believes.
A few days later, State Department officials leaked news of a contingency proposal to reduce the $9 billion in loan guarantees promised to Israel for every dollar spent on the fence where it veers into the West Bank.
It long has been American policy to cut aid to Israel for its non-security expenditures on settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In the State Department view, the fence, where it cuts into the West Bank, might similarly be considered untenable Israeli development on Palestinian land.
No decision has been made yet on the loan-reduction proposal. Israeli officials, however, believe the Americans wanted to broach the idea to pressure Israel into building the rest of the fence more or less along the Green Line, the boundary that divides Israel proper from the West Bank, captured from Jordan in 1967.
Israel, it seems, is ready to comply. One of the options for the fence was to go around the city of Ariel, Israel's largest settlement in the West Bank, some eight miles from the Green Line. That would have meant cutting deeply into West Bank territory in that one spot.
Now, however, officials are saying privately there are other ways of defending places like Ariel. The rest of the fence, another 100 miles to the south, probably will run very close to the Green Line.
Israeli officials are telling their American colleagues that the main reason the Palestinians don't want the fence is that it will take away the leverage terrorism has given them throughout the past decade of negotiations.
Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report.
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