Bush backs Israel’s land claim

President Bush yesterday endorsed Israel’s claim to a disputed portion of the West Bank and said Palestinian refugees must settle outside Israel, prompting anger from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

The shift in Mr. Bush’s Middle East policy reflected a growing frustration with Mr. Arafat’s support for terrorism. But the president also backed a move by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to placate the Palestinians withdrawal of Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip and a section of the West Bank.

By claiming other land in the West Bank, Mr. Sharon dashed the hopes of Palestinians who had sought a return to borders drawn more than a half-century ago. They wanted those borders incorporated into final peace talks with Israel.

“In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949,” the president said in a joint press conference with Mr. Sharon.

The smiling prime minister was clearly pleased to have secured the president’s support in keeping at least some of Israel’s gains in the 1967 war, when it seized Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“I, myself, have been fighting terrorism for many years,” Mr. Sharon said in the White House. “In all these years, I have never met a leader as committed as you are, Mr. President, to the struggle for freedom and the need to confront terrorism wherever it exists.”

Israeli officials expressed deep satisfaction with Mr. Bush’s statement, seen as critical to Mr. Sharon’s hopes of selling the political plan back home.

“Understandings reached today between the prime minister and President Bush gives us the assurance to move forward, to take the risks that go with giving up territory and evacuating established settlements,” said Daniel Ayalon, Israeli ambassador to the United States.

Officials said that logistically and politically it would take Israel nine months to a year to implement the plan.

Mr. Arafat denounced the new U.S.-Israeli agreement.

“The Palestinian leadership warns of the dangers of reaching such an accord, because it means clearly the complete end of the peace process,” he said in a statement.

Mr. Arafat added that the pact would prompt a “cycle of violence and end all the signed agreements” between Israel and the Palestinians.

A senior administration official acknowledged that U.S.-Israeli talks have “obviously generated a lot of anxiety,” but suggested that Mr. Arafat’s reaction was unfair.

“It’s, I think, regrettable that some of these statements are being issued and positions taken before anyone has had an opportunity to actually look at the language of what the president has said and what the prime minister has said,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“If people will take the time and look at the language and put it in the broader context of the opportunity that is here they will, on reflection, see that there is really an opportunity for peace,” the official added.

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