Yet this would be a lame excuse for them forgetting about – or seeking to minimise – the existence and crucial importance of the letters exchanged between President Bush and Israel’s then Prime Minister – Ariel Sharon – on 14 April 2004 and a subsequent letter sent by Sharon’s Chief of Staff – Dov Weinglass – to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on 18 April 2004.

This correspondence resulted in courageous and highly dangerous decisions being taken by Israel to kick start President Bush’s stalled 2003 Road Map – envisioned by him as the key to resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict by 2005.

The President’s letter provided the catalyst – and the political justification – for Israel unilaterally evacuating the entire Jewish population of 8000 from Gaza and withdrawing Israel’s army totally from there without any preconditions or undertakings from Gaza’s highly hostile Arab population..

The Presidential letter also set out the framework that President Bush would support as Israel attempted to progress the Road Map that would create a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan.

President Bush’s letter clearly – and unambiguously – stated that;

1. The borders of the new Arab State would not encompass the entire West Bank despite successive Arab leaders having demanded this outcome for the previous 37 years,

2. Jewish towns and villages in the West Bank would be incorporated into the borders of Israel

3. The Arabs would have to forego their demand to be given the right to emigrate to Israel and

4. Israel’s existence as a Jewish State would be assured

Jerusalem Post Editor David Horovitz joined a group of Israeli journalists who met with President Bush in the Oval Office last week prior to the President’s visit to Israel to take part in its 60th Anniversary celebrations. In his editorial – published on 14 May – Mr Horovitz revealed the extent of the American loss of memory concerning the President’s 2004 letter in the following terms:

“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, however, has been known to minimize the significance of this four-year-old letter. Just last week, for instance, she told reporters that the 2004 letter “talked about realities at that time. And there are realities for both sides….

Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley has also given briefings to the effect that Israel has tried to overstate the importance of a rather vague letter, which was issued at a time when Sharon was seeking to bolster support for the pullout from Gaza.

And in answering my question, Bush did not at first even realize that I was referring to the 2004 letter. Hadley, who was also in the Oval Office, had to prompt him. “Okay, the letters,” the president then said, remembering.”

This is not simply memory loss but something far worse and more sinister.

In their apparent desperation to do any deal before losing the reins of power in eight months time, the President and his Secretary of State are treading on extremely dangerous ground in giving out signals that they are possibly prepared to renege on their solemn undertakings to Israel.

Israel has already paid a high price in relying on the President’s letter.

Gaza has been turned into a de facto terrorist Palestinian State. Israel has had to sustain a never ending barrage of rockets and mortars fired indiscriminately into Israeli population centres from Gaza by a bewildering variety of terrorist groups and sub-groups who would have had no chance of becoming so firmly entrenched in Gaza if the Israeli Army had remained there.

The latest shelling of a shopping mall in Ashkelon using an Iranian Katyusha rocket fired from Gaza signifies a highly dangerous escalation of the conflict. It also indicates the ease with which such sophisticated weaponry can be smuggled into Gaza through the Philadelphi corridor under the noses of the Egyptians despite Condoleezza Rice’s assurances to the Israelis that this would not occur.

Israel needs to make it perfectly clear to President Bush and his Secretary of State that any attempt to resile from the President’s letter will lead to the immediate termination of all further negotiations – that the President then will have no one but himself to blame for bringing his own vision to an ignominious end.

Israel’s Prime Minister – Ehud Olmert – has not forgotten – or overlooked – the critical significance of the President’s letter in any ongoing negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

President Bush and Ms Rice were quick to claim credit at the international conference held in Annapolis last November for a breakthrough in the resumption of those negotiations that would see the three clearly defined stages of the Road Map now being dealt with simultaneously rather than stage by stage.

Maybe the President and Madam Secretary were so overcome by their apparent success that they failed to hear – or perhaps hoped everyone might overlook – what Prime Minister Olmert told the gathered world leaders about the course of those future negotiations:

“The negotiations will be based on previous agreements between us, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map and the April 14, 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.”

Jews have accumulated many memories – both pleasant and unpleasant – since losing their State, being expelled from there 2000 years ago and being dispersed to all corners of the globe. The Jews steeled themselves to ensure they never forgot who they were, where they came from and to where they would one day return.

Strength comes from remembering – not forgetting.

President Bush and his Secretary of State would do well to remember – and heed – this lesson as the State of Israel remembers the 60th Anniversary of its reconstitution on and in its ancient biblical homeland.

This delaying tactic has failed in the past and failed again this time. Jews have every right to settle in the West Bank in international law and Israel has made it clear it will not agree to totally waive that right as a pre-condition to the conduct of negotiations.

Regrettably the Arabs have never stopped making such unrealistic and politically unattainable territorial demands for the last 90 years. Had they accepted proposals made by the international community 60-70 years ago, they would have had a flourishing and thriving State today in an area of former Palestine far greater than size they are now demanding.

Many similar opportunities have presented themselves since then but have been allowed to pass – by rejection or default. Some occurred before – and some after – the founding of the PLO in 1964. One was created in 2003 with the formulation of the Roadmap proposed by America, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union – the Quartet – but remains unimplemented in the smallest detail.

The PLO has actually gone backwards in political influence since the Roadmap was unveiled. It has lost political control in Gaza. It lacks the authority to enforce security and root out terrorism in the West Bank and Gaza – essential conditions for the Roadmap to have any chance of success. It is now but one of many political groups vying for power amongst the Palestinian Arabs.

Yet – ironically – it continues to receive substantial international financial assistance and diplomatic support despite continuing to make the following longstanding and non negotiable territorial – and in some cases abhorrently racist – demands that it knows can never be achieved in any negotiations:

1. That Jews be denied the right to settle in any part of the West Bank – part of the ancient biblical and internationally sanctioned Jewish homeland approved by the League of Nations and the United Nations

2. That all 450000 Jews currently living in the West Bank be uprooted from their homes and businesses located there.

3. That the West Bank become a Jew free zone.

4. That the Palestinian Arabs be granted sovereignty and statehood in all of the West Bank

5. That millions of Palestinian Arabs or their descendants be given the unconditional right to go and live in Israel.

These conditions are completely unacceptable to Israel. President Bush has made it clear he supports Israel’s position. The PLO knows this – yet it still pursues – and persists with – these impossible demands.

Two principal reasons underscore why these demands continue to be made:

1. They ensure that no resolution of the conflict will be possible thereby keeping alive the 43 year old PLO dream of driving all the Jews out of Palestine as the only solution.

This paranoia has been the stumbling block that has prevented the Arabs accepting any proposals over the past 70 years for the territorial division of Palestine between Jews and Arabs. The PLO agreed to amend its Charter in 1993 to reflect it had abandoned that position – yet has failed to do so to this day.

The PLO shares common ground in pursuing this goal with Islamic Jihad whose spokesman – Abu Hamza – stated in the Washington Post on 27 December:

“We will continue to bring terror and destruction and death among the Zionists until we uproot them from our land”

Hamas – the PLO’s main political rival – has declared that any negotiations “are valueless and weightless and would not serve the national cause of our people and would undermine its higher interests.” KUNA – 27 December.

For Hamas that national cause is also the destruction of Israel.

So the tactic continues for the PLO to conduct Mickey Mouse negotiations whilst chipping away at the edges to secure some territorial or other advantage either before or during those negotiations such as freezing any building or settlement activity by Israel, trying to stop completion of the security barrier and procuring prisoner releases.

2. Continuing negotiations postpone the Arab League accepting the primary responsibility for ending the refugee status of the Palestinian Arabs living outside the boundaries of former Palestine – a status directly created by the invasion of Palestine by the armies of six Arab League members in 1948 and disgracefully and inhumanely perpetuated by the Arab League ever since.

The power inherent in the PLO being a negotiating partner is no doubt exhilarating. Travelling the world capitals and being received by Heads of State makes for the good life for those lucky enough to be part of it. But any chance of gaining statehood is an impossibility whilst these unrealistic demands continue to be made.

The PLO shows no signs of making any concessions and so is destined to continue to walk the path of statelessness – whilst the territory available for any such state is further diminished by new facts created on the ground that makes the likelihood of such a state in the future a territorial impossibility.

This position has arisen because the PLO has in reality never lost the plot – to create an Arab state in the whole of former Palestine over the ashes of Israel.

The post-Annapolis negotiations will ultimately be dubbed as “the negotiations to nowhere” resulting in the demise of the PLO as Israel’s negotiating partner. Once again the PLO will have missed the boat – probably the last boat it can ever hope to catch before it sinks into political oblivion.

This call to remove every Jew living in the West Bank – 500000 men, women and children – was accepted in total silence by the United Nations. No urgent meeting of the General Assembly or any of its Human Rights Committees was called to condemn this racial vilification of Jews by a former Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority and its chief negotiator with Israel.

One remembers how fervently world leaders correctly argued that you couldn’t blame all Moslems for the terrorist actions of those few who hijack Islam and commit horrible atrocities worldwide in the name of Allah.

No similar statements were heard from those same leaders this week condemning Mr Queri for calling for the removal of those 500000 Jews because of the misguided actions of a few.

Collective punishment – not to be tolerated for Gazan Arabs – was perfectly acceptable when it involved West Bank Jews.

Indeed the UN Security Council met just three days after Mr. Qurei’s outrageous statement –yet raised not one word of protest or censure at his highly offensive and hate-ridden remarks.

Instead it passed Resolution 1850 (2008) by 14 votes to 0 – with Libya abstaining – declaring “its support for the negotiations initiated at Annapolis on 27 November 2007 and its commitment to the irreversibility of the bilateral negotiations“ and called “on both parties to fulfil their obligations under the Performance-Based Roadmap, as stated in their Annapolis Joint Understanding and refrain from any steps that could undermine confidence or prejudice the outcome of negotiations.”

One could not imagine a more destructive statement designed to undermine confidence or to prejudice the outcome of the Annapolis negotiations than that delivered by Mr. Qurei.

His demand defiantly flies in the face of the written commitment given by President Bush to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on 14 April 2004 – forming an integral part of the Roadmap negotiating process under the auspices of the Quartet – America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

In that letter President Bush stated:

“As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations 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, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities. “

In declaring its support for the Annapolis negotiations the Security Council conveniently ignored the basis on which those negotiations were undertaken by Israel as expressed in these clear and unambiguous terms by its Prime Minister – Ehud Olmert – at the opening of the Annapolis conference:

“The negotiations will be based on previous agreements between us, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map and the April 14, 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.”

All the international players sitting in the Security Council – including outgoing US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – were surely aware that Mr Qurei’s statement sounded the death knell for the Annapolis negotiations and signalled the end of any hope for a successful outcome of those negotiations.

Yet instead of condemning Mr Qurei’s statement – or demanding its retraction – Ms. Rice had the effrontery to tell the Security Council that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators:

“had made the choice to defeat an ideology of hatred with one of hope”

The only conclusion that one can draw from the Security Council’s extraordinary conduct in totally ignoring Mr Qurei’s statement is its unwillingness to face up to the fact that Annapolis is finished, President Bush’s dream has turned into a nightmare and the Quartet’s strategy in backing President Bush’s Roadmap has exposed it as totally impotent in having any influence to determine the allocation of sovereignty in the West Bank between Jews and Arabs.

The Security Council by its silence has offered encouragement to those Jew haters like Mr Qurei who for the last 130 years have opposed Jews having any right to live in their biblical homeland – the West Bank – or indeed within any part of the 23% of Palestine designated by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter as the site for the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home.

In doing nothing to disavow the Arabs from pursuing their long standing enmity and racial hatred of the Jews, the Security Council has ignored a whole body of international law on the issue and given comfort to the long held Arab view that everything done since the creation of the Mandate in 1920 is deemed null and void.

“Jews out” is indeed a call that is still alive and kicking in the Middle East.

This racist fantasyland has been given a considerable boost by the Security Council’s flirtation with – and failure to unequivocally repudiate – Mr Qurei’s remarks when endorsing Resolution 1850. United Nations efforts to eliminate all forms of racism worldwide have been seriously compromised.

RIP President Bush’s Performance –Based Roadmap. RIP Annapolis. RIP the United Nations.

Carter successfully brokered a peace treaty at Camp David in 1978 between Egypt and Israel, which has endured for 29 years surviving many strains that could have permanently ended the relationship during this period.

Clinton walked away empty handed in 2000 at Camp David after two weeks of intense one on one diplomacy with Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat.

Ms Rice certainly needs all the advice and help she can get as she struggles to get her planned international meeting in Annapolis off the ground. Even if she succeeds it could end in so much bitterness and enmity that it could signal the end of President Bush’s vision to create a new democratic Arab State between Israel and Jordan.

Why then did Carter succeed and Clinton fail and what lessons are there to be learnt by Ms Rice?

Three critical differences marked the negotiations that were undertaken by each President:

1. Two sovereign States – Israel and Egypt – were the parties in the Carter negotiations.

One sovereign State – Israel – and one non sovereign entity – the Palestinian Authority – were the parties in the Clinton negotiations.

2. Egyptian sovereign territory – the Sinai – was the territorial issue at the Carter negotiations.

Territory belonging to no sovereign State – the West Bank and Gaza – was the territorial issue at the Clinton negotiations.

3. Up to 7000 Jews faced removal from the Sinai to successfully conclude the Carter negotiations, whilst up to 200000 Jews faced removal from the West Bank and Gaza if the Clinton negotiations were to succeed.

Additionally, highly emotive issues concerning refugees and Jerusalem were the sting in the tail for Clinton’s negotiations once the territorial issue had been resolved.

Israel had no historic territorial claims on Sinai. Israel returned every square metre of the Sinai and removed all 7000 Jews living there to secure peace with Egypt.

In the process Israel also handed over the Alma Oil Field it had discovered valued at over $100 billion – which would have secured energy independence for Israel if it had been retained – as well as military bases and airfields.

100% of Egyptian sovereign territory captured by Israel in the Six Day War was thus returned to Egypt by Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin – for solemn promises of peace contained on a piece of paper.

Arafat similarly demanded the return of every square metre of the West Bank and Gaza in the Clinton negotiations which would have necessitated all 200000 Jews living there being uprooted. If it had worked for Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat – Arafat probably reasoned -why would it not work for him?

There was one great difference.

The land Arafat sought exclusively for himself was “no man’s land “- territory in which sovereignty remained unallocated between Jews and Arabs and whose last sovereign ruler was Great Britain under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine from 1920-1948.

Following Britain’s withdrawal in May 1948, Jordan had seized and occupied the West Bank – dispossessing those Jews then living there – until losing it to Israel in the Six Day War in 1967.

Jews – who had been entitled to settle in the West Bank from 1922 under Article 6 of the Mandate as later confirmed by article 80 of the United Nations Charter – started returning to live there after 1967.

Arafat was offered 90% of the West Bank and all of Gaza, refused to take it and ended up with nothing. 450000 Jews currently living in the West Bank complicate any such offer being renewed again.

Condolezza Rice has hopefully learnt the following four lessons from these two Presidential negotiations :

1. Israel has valid territorial claims in the West Bank – the biblical heartland of the Jewish people - created by the League of Nations and the United Nations, that will not be ceded in their entirety.

2. Removing 450000 Jews to satisfy the territorial demands of a non-sovereign claimant with an inferior claim in international law to Israel is a certain recipe for negotiations to fail.

3. Negotiations between Sovereign States are easier to successfully conclude – especially where territorial disputes are involved that have a linkage to those States historically, geographically and demographically as is the case with Israel, Jordan and the West Bank.

4. Negotiations that have failed are not likely to succeed in the future if the same demands continue to be made without any real change by the party who caused the original negotiations to fail.

Sean McCormack said Ms. Rice:

“is a student of history and has a keen appreciation for how we can apply the lessons of history, what we can learn from those who have gone before us”

Her discussions with Presidents Carter and Clinton should have convinced her that further negotiations on President Bush’s two state vision have the hallmark of Clinton failure stamped all over them.

Ms Rice needs to have the candour to tell the President just that and to formulate a policy which can lead to negotiations between Israel and Jordan on the future of the West Bank which can have successful outcomes like those achieved between Israel and Egypt in the Carter negotiations.

President Bush can still leave the Oval Office a winner and avoid being buried in the diplomatic graveyard among those who tried – and failed – to resolve any aspect of the Arab-Israel conflict.

To do so he needs to quickly jettison his two state vision which has gone nowhere in five years. His decision – either way – will become history too.

One major reason has been the inability of the PLO to seriously change its mindset and specifically revoke or amend the offending provisions of the PLO Covenant that call for the destruction of Israel and that prevent the creation of this new State as envisioned by Oslo, former President Bill Clinton, President George Bush and his Quartet partners – Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

On 9 September 1993, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat had made that written commitment to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin as the quid pro quo for the Oslo negotiating process to commence between Israel and the PLO and for the historic handshake between them on the White House lawns just four days later.

A long and tortuous process by Israel and America then followed to ensure Arafat’s total compliance with that commitment. On 14 December 1998 President Clinton stated:

“I thank you for your rejection—fully, finally and forever—of the passages in the Palestinian Charter calling for the destruction of Israel. For they were the ideological underpinnings of a struggle renounced at Oslo. By revoking them once and for all, you have sent, I say again, a powerful message not to the government, but to the people of Israel. You will touch people on the street there. You will reach their hearts there.”

Yet despite this declaration not one article of the Covenant has been revised or revoked to this very day nor has that message touched the Palestinian Arabs or reached their hearts.

The Chairman of the Palestine National Council charged with making those changes – Salim Za’anoun – stated on 3 February 2001, in the official Palestinian Authority newspaper, that the Covenant remained unchanged and was still in force [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida as translated by MEMRI]

A look at just three of the thirty three Articles in the PLO Covenant shows why it is essential that every Article be reviewed and altered if any meaningful negotiations can possibly be undertaken post Annapolis.

Article 1

“Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people: it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.”

This article ignores any Jewish rights in Palestine. Why not amend it to read as follows:

“ Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people and of the Jewish people,and the Arab Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.”

Article 2:

“Palestine with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit”

This article absolutely prohibits President Bush’s two state solution and could be changed as follows:

“Palestine comprises the land contained within the boundaries that existed during the British Mandate from 1920-1948 and has now ceased to comprise an indivisible territorial unit. For purposes of clarification Palestine includes the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan which comprised part of the British Mandate until 1946.”

Article 15:

“The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine and everything that has been based on them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism being a divine religion is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own: they are citizens of the states to which they belong.”

This article ignores the binding effect of international law and is racist, discriminatory and offensive in the extreme. It needs to be redrawn to perhaps read as follows:

“The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed legal and binding. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are compatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism is both a divine religion and an independent nationality. Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they can like Palestinian Arabs be citizens of the states to which they otherwise belong”

How can successful negotiations be concluded whilst this current unclear and confusing mindset confronts the PLO and Israeli negotiators? How have these provisions been specifically rejected by the PLO ?

The PLO needs to immediately face these demons and excise them unequivocally and indisputably from its thinking if the ongoing negotiations are to have any prospect of success.

This is not a question of semantic pettiness or nit picking. It goes to the very bona fides of Israel’s negotiating partner and the sincerity and seriousness with which it intends to conduct these negotiations.

Perhaps the first indication of this troubling mindset – and the effect it can have on the negotiations – was the following remarkable statement recently made by the PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat :

“One of the more pressing problems is the Zionist regime’s insistence on being recognized as a Jewish state… Israel could call itself whatever it wanted, but the PA would never acknowledge Israel’s Jewish identity.” [ Jerusalem Post, 14 November 2007]

Sweeping this – and similar recent statements by leading Arab spokesmen – under the carpet will only guarantee the failure of future negotiations. They will be difficult and complex enough – without such institutionalised mind blocks to reconciliation and recognition that had supposedly been dead and buried with President Clinton‘s declaration on 14 December 1998.

The PLO needs to liberate itself first before it can hope to liberate any land. Failure to do so over the last 14 years has seen its continuing decline in influence. It is now time to get serious and stop playing games.

His closest confidante – the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – suggested as much when she made this blunt observation after her visit to the Middle East this past week:

“I spent a lot of time on security issues, not on-the-ground today security issues, but how would you envision the security of two states living side by side, because they’re going to have to come up with a security concept between them. It’s one of the problems that we’re dealing with, frankly, in the Israeli population. And I heard it not just from the Israeli officials but from a broad range of Israelis. They had the withdrawal from Lebanon and it brought instability in Lebanon. They had the withdrawal from the Gaza, and look what happened in Gaza.

If, in fact, they’re going to be asked to withdraw from the West Bank at some point, what does that mean for the security of Israel? That’s a fair question. It really is. And so one of the things that I take back is that we are going to need to spend a lot of time thinking about how this state, if we are fortunate enough to be able to bring it into being, how it is going to relate to the security of its neighbor and vice versa.”

This marks the first time that the Secretary of State has so forcefully come to grips with the security guarantees that Israel needs to receive before the President’s two state vision can ever get off the ground.

It would be inconceivable that she would make these momentous comments without first having discussed them with the President.

Ms. Rice would be well aware that when President Bush first spoke of his two state vision on 24 June 2002, he laid down two preconditions necessary for its achievement:

1.The Palestinian people must elect new leaders not compromised by terror

2.These new leaders must build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty.

These conditions remain substantially unfulfilled more than 5 years later – and present indications are they are going to be a long time coming – if ever at all.

It was his recognition of this reality that inspired President Bush to call his planned international meeting in Annapolis next month – which he designed essentially to try and advance the fulfilment of these fundamental preconditions. His concern was well founded.

Both persons currently claiming to lead the Palestinian Arabs – Ismail Haniyeh and Mahmoud Abbas – are compromised by terror.

Haniyeh heads Hamas – a movement that openly calls for the destruction of Israel. Abbas – one of Yasser Arafat’s closest advisors – is now the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation which is no less vehement than Hamas in its desire to wipe Israel off the map. They only differ in the strategy they wish to employ to achieve their common aim.

A practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty are mere mirages on an invisible horizon.

The Arabs have totally rejected President Bush’s agenda insisting that their attendance at Annapolis be conditioned on substantive agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority being reached before the meeting even begins concerning the core issues of Jerusalem, refugees and borders

Significantly Ms Rice has rebuffed the Arabs attempted hijack of the President’s agenda stating:

“So I know we get very focused on, you know, what will be said about borders, what will be said about Jerusalem, what will be said about the refugees. In fact, a lot has been said over a long period of time about those issues and more will have to be said. But I’m also quite convinced that one of the really crucial pieces that has to be filled in are these concepts of how the states will relate to each other in practical terms concerning security and in practical terms concerning economic issues”

Perhaps the penny is slowly dropping and the realisation is dawning that the Arabs are totally disinterested in Israel’s security concerns and in meeting the very conditions laid down by President Bush as essential if his two state vision is going to be achieved.

The abandonment of the President’s vision does not necessarily mean that the conflict in the West Bank need continue unabated until a democratic nirvana is achieved there under a leader not compromised by terror.

The Arabs have already publicly signalled they would be prepared to consider Israel swapping some of its vacant land in return for keeping those parts of the West Bank populated by 450000 Jews.

Satisfying Israel’s security needs in the context of a territorial resolution that does not involve all of the West Bank remaining under Arab control can be achieved very quickly if Israel and Jordan divide the West Bank between them.

Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel already contains the following guarantees concerning Israel’s security that have stood the test of time for the last 12 years and remained rock solid through several crises:

“1. They recognise and will respect each other’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence;

2. They recognise and will respect each other’s right to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries;

3. They will develop good neighbourly relations of co-operation between them to ensure lasting security, will refrain from the threat or use of force against each other and will settle all disputes between them by peaceful means;”

Negotiations between Jordan and Israel within the framework of this existing peace treaty offer the hope of a better life and prosperity for the Arab residents of the West Bank, will free them from Israeli occupation and achieve a measure of peace stability and security in the region not enjoyed for 60 years.

Such negotiations will not resolve the issue of refugees. No plan can ever hope to do so whilst the Arabs insist on millions of refugees and their descendants becoming citizens of Israel.

Stay with the vision or accept the reality? President Bush at last appears to be succumbing to the reality.