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| Israel-Palestine |
| Boucher slaps down a St Pancake fan masking as a journalist |
| 2004-04-16 |
| EFL from 4/15 Daily Press Briefing. Emphasis mine - snarking taken care of by RIchard. QUESTION: Richard, leaving aside for the moment the fact that under this plan, the Israelis will evacuate from land that was the Palestinians’, should be, arguably, by most people, the Palestinians’ now, and would have been under most previous plans the Palestinians’ in the future... what exactly do they get out of this other than the fact that they’ve now been told they no longer have the possibility of a right of -- of the right of return and... that the United States has decided ahead of final status negotiations that there will be some Israeli presence in the West Bank? MR. BOUCHER: I don’t -- leaving aside everything, what else is there? You can’t quite do it that way. You’ve got to focus on the fact... that there have been many plans, many discussions, many negotiations that the United States has very much been a part with, that we have worked with the Palestinians in many negotiating fora where all these issues were discussed. We have a very real prospect that something that Palestinians have always looked for, and that’s the departure of Israeli settlers from territory that they believe... should be Palestinian, that that could actually occur. There’s a difference between saying... it’s always been a part of the plan that Israel would withdraw from these areas. The big difference between saying that’s always been part of the negotiation and saying it actually has a prospect of happening, that there’s a reality on the ground that can be created by the Palestinians and by the Israelis through Israeli withdrawal, for the Palestinian -- through the Palestinians standing up governmental authority and taking care of keeping the peace in those areas, that’s a reality that they have a chance to achieve, not a negotiating position that has to be negotiated more. QUESTION: Yeah. But the point is, Richard, that every previous attempt at peace had always come down to the fact that Gaza was going to be the Palestinians’, and previous Israeli governments had agreed to that, too. So, you know -- that would be something that they might (inaudible). MR. BOUCHER: The difference was saying eventually it might be and saying it can be now, can be soon. Making it happen. QUESTION: Okay. And so -- and so is the United States then, when this happens, are you -- I don’t remember the last time a senior U.S. official was in Gaza. I don’t think you’ve had too many people go out there. MR. BOUCHER: Well, unfortunately, we haven’t had people go down there since our people were killed there. QUESTION: Yeah, exactly. Since then. So you’ll be, obviously, going to be helping out? I mean, the infrastructure down there is totally shattered. The Israelis have destroyed pretty much all of it. Do you have plans to go in there when it’s returned to the Palestinians so that it doesn’t become a huge slum? MR. BOUCHER: Obviously, the actions... when the Palestinians are running it will depend, in great part, on the security situation. But if you look at what the President said yesterday and what we’ve said in our letters, there is a firm commitment from the United States, and, indeed, from the entire international community, to help build the political institutions, the economics, the economic opportunities and the economic institutions, the social institutions, the security services that are necessary for the Palestinians to make a successful Gaza. QUESTION: Okay, last one. MR. BOUCHER: And to use it as -- and not to stop there, but rather to use that as a catalyst to move forward towards a final negotiation of a Palestinian state. QUESTION: The final -- last one. You’ve put a lot of emphasis on this kind of PR campaign in the Arab and Muslim world to try and convince them that you are an honest broker and that you’re not anti-Muslim. And yet, this plan comes out yesterday in which, for the first time, the President of the United States says that there can be, that there must be, in fact, that it would be unrealistic to assume that Israel didn’t remain in parts of the West Bank, that Palestinians who were driven off their land or fled their land in ’48 and ’49 would not be allowed to come back and reclaim them. At the same time, this morning, you were the only country at the UN Commission on Human Rights to vote against a resolution sponsored by the European Union that called for an independent Palestine and a freeze on settlements, and you were one of only a handful, I think 15, to vote against a resolution condemning Israel for human rights abuses in the occupied territories. How exactly does that square with your campaign to convince all -- and I might add that Beth Jones said -- MR. BOUCHER: "The indictment further alleges." QUESTION: Beth Jones said last week that the Secretary was... going to go to Berlin for a conference on anti-Semitism later this month. Now, no one would argue that going to a conference on anti-Semitism... is a bad thing, but aren’t you concerned at all that your message of peace, love and understanding to the people of the Arab and Muslim world is going to get trampled by this? MR. BOUCHER: If I was to take the obverse of all the positions that you outlined that we have taken; if we were to support unreal solutions for the Middle East, solutions that have no relation to reality; if we were to vote for resolutions that we felt are unbalanced at the Human Rights Commission; if we were to oppose conferences on anti-Semitism, which is still a problem in the world today; would that somehow help the United States achieve its policy goals in the world? Would that make the Middle East more peaceful? Would that help Palestinians build a state? The fact is, the United States is willing to do the real work with the parties, the real work on the ground, the real work with the neighbors, to help the Palestinians build a Palestinian state. When the U.S. President, for the first time, announced that the United States supported the creation of a state called Palestine that can live side by side with a Jewish state of Israel, when he said that that could even occur before final status negotiations began, did people complain that we were somehow taking a position that prejudiced the outcome? No, they said that we were accepting the reality that that was going to be part of the outcome. When previous presidents of the United States, previous negotiators from the Palestinian and Israeli sides have sat down to talk about land swaps, have talked about -- have sat down to talk about allowing some of these population centers to remain because they were a reality that had to be taken into account, how is that different than saying let’s deal with reality now? When previous negotiators, Palestinian and Israeli, sat down and said that the right of the return is a disputed issue and it can’t be exercised fully, how is that different than what we are recognizing now? The fact is, we believe that a negotiation that is going to succeed, a Palestinian state that is going to succeed, both are going to have to be based on certain realities. One of those realities that we can create is an Israeli evacuation, for the first time ever, of settlements, an Israeli departure from Gaza, an Israeli evacuation of some of the settlements on the West Bank. We think that that reality is worth working for and we intend to continue moving forward in that direction. QUESTION: So the answer to my question, though, is no, you don’t think that anything that you’ve been doing over the past year and a half, or this Administration has done in terms of the Middle East situation, that (inaudible) has hurt your campaign to try and convince people in the Arab and Muslim world that you are not -- that you remain an honest broker and that you are not -- MR. BOUCHER: The simplest answer to your question is this is not a PR campaign, that the United States takes positions on these issues in order to advance our national interest, in order to try to achieve real peace for Palestinians and Israelis alike in this region, and that we will continue to do that and we will continue to explain to the world why our policies are the best way to move forward towards those goals. QUESTION: Just I wanted to clarify, this population center -- I never heard of this word till yesterday. Is this a cuter word for settlements? MR. BOUCHER: It’s a description of the reality that we see on the ground. I don’t -- QUESTION: What is the reality on the ground? MR. BOUCHER: That there are centers of population in the West Bank that need to be taken into account. |
| Posted by:Super Hose |
| #6 The question is where will they go within Palestine. The camps provide a roof over their heads and food. Leaving means they need to find work and homes. I certainly think the neighboring states that have refugee camps should try to send the Pals into Palestine I just imagine a significant number will be unwilling to go. Perhaps they could move into abandoned settlements but that seems too neat to be likely. |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2004-04-16 3:10:14 PM |
| #5 My timeline might be off but I am assuming that that the majority of those Palestinians living in those camps will want to leave we they realize (50 year late) that they are never going to return to lands inside Israel. What other choice will they have at this point? Yes there will be those hardcore Paleos that will stay and seethe about what: ‘Might have been’ but most will see the writing on the wall. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge (VRWC CA Chapter) 2004-04-16 2:22:43 PM |
| #4 Cyber Sarge, who would dismantle the camps? The UN? The Pals will want the camps to stay even if its just to breed terrorists. The UN doesn't move that quickly and probably wants the camps to stay as well because the majority of beurocrats in the UN favor the Pals. Am I missing something? |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2004-04-16 12:54:36 PM |
| #3 Bush continues to amaze me by the way he knows the difference between left/right, black/white, and good/evil. The question of the Paleos returning to land in Israeli proper is THE major rock in the shoe of the Paleos. It is also where they gain their strength, angst, and weakness. The Paleos that continue to live in the UN sponsored refugee camps for some fifty years already know that they are NOT returning to Israel and probably wouldn’t if they could. An entire generation has come and gone, the Paleo areas in Lebanon have come and gone, and countless ‘peace’ |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge (VRWC CA Chapter) 2004-04-16 11:29:47 AM |
| #2 Will teh reporter be reporting from Gaza? Notice how the reporter wasn't even fazed by Boucher's mention of the deaths of Americans at Paleo hands? Help them rebuild? I'd prefer we help them level it so they can start over cleanly....carpet bombing seems appropriate. F 'EM! |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-04-16 10:05:02 AM |
| #1 "The indictment further alleges." That's great. Going to have to hit C-SPAN to watch this one... |
| Posted by: snellenr 2004-04-16 9:43:47 AM |