TEL AVIV — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faces widespread skepticism here that he will be able to secure a full U.S. blessing for his plan to retain control of five West Bank settlements when he meets with President Bush today at a much-anticipated White House summit.
Mr. Sharon has offered to pull out of Gaza in exchange for a series of guarantees that would endorse Israel’s position in peace talks with the Palestinians. U.S. assurances that Israel need not pull back to the pre-1967 West Bank border would boost Mr. Sharon’s chances of winning a critical referendum on the pullout plan among members of his Likud Party.
Mr. Sharon, who arrived in Washington yesterday afternoon, on Monday expressed hope he could retain control over Ma’aleh Adumim, Givat Ze’ev, Ariel, Kiryat Arba and the Etzion bloc of settlements. But Mr. Bush will be unlikely to give Mr. Sharon a blank check at a time when the Washington needs Arab support for the troubled reconstruction effort in Iraq.
“I think there is no chance and no expectation that the U.S. will deliver any details on the settlement blocs” it would be willing to recognize, said Trade Minister Ehud Olmert, a close ally of Mr. Sharon, in an interview with Israel’s Channel 1 Television.
Mr. Olmert said he expects Washington to give Israel a vague recognition that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are a political fact of life making a complete return to the old borders demanded by the Palestinians impossible. Even that would be a victory for Mr. Sharon, Mr. Olmert said.
The Bush administration has walked a delicate line on the Sharon plan, saying a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from some parts of the Gaza Strip would be “welcome,” but that any final deal must be negotiated with the Palestinians.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, using stronger language than U.S. officials have employed in the past, said yesterday the partial pullout could represent a “historic opportunity” to advance the stalled U.S.-backed “road map” to a Middle East peace settlement.
“The prospect of an Israeli withdrawal from significant territory and the Palestinian administration of Gaza is really an opportunity to move forward and we want to try to take advantage of this opportunity,” Mr. Boucher said in Washington.
Opposition Israeli parliament member Colette Avital said the U.S. government is unlikely to give Mr. Sharon a commitment that goes beyond what was discussed at the failed June 2000 peace talks in Camp David. At the time, the Clinton administration was urging the Palestinians to accept three Israeli West Bank settlement blocs.
“It seems unlikely that president will sanction specific settlements,” she said. “I don’t think he will do too much to upset the Arab nations at this time.”
For the past few weeks, aides to Mr. Sharon and Mr. Bush have been poring over the closely guarded details of an unprecedented pullback in which Israel would dismantle nearly all of its 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip, where 7,500 Jewish settlers live alongside 1.2 million Palestinians. The plan also is said to contain a symbolic dismantling of about four of the West Bank’s 120 settlements.
Mr. Sharon has staked his political future on the disengagement plan, which has drawn heavy fire from right-wing members of his coalition and even from within his own Likud Party. A May Likud referendum on the plan is seen as the only way the prime minister can deflect criticism from hard-liners.
“I think that there is no disengagement in this plan. It won’t defeat terror. It won’t help Israel. It only promises the dismantling of settlements,” said Michael Ratzon, a Likud member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
“If the prime minister returns and says the settlement blocs are part of the state of Israel, it could help the plan. If it remains just talk, then we’re tired of talk.”
• David R. Sands contributed to this story from Washington.
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