Olmert says that Israel not fully sticking to commitment on settlements
The Associated PressPublished: January 4, 2008

JERUSALEM: Israel is not sticking to its commitment to halt building in Jewish settlements, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an interview published Friday in an Israeli newspaper, days before U.S. President George W. Bush arrives in the region to prod Israel and the Palestinians toward a final peace deal.

It's possible that there is "no chance" a peace agreement will be reached this year as Bush hopes, Olmert told the English-language daily The Jerusalem Post. Bush has not applied any pressure on Israel to advance in the negotiations, Olmert said.

Bush is slated to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories starting Jan. 9, in his first trip to the area as president, after the sides agreed at a U.S.-sponsored conference in November to renew peace talks frozen during seven years of violence.

As part of the negotiations, Israel and the Palestinians have revived a 2003 peace plan known as the road map. Under that plan, Israel committed to halt settlement construction and dismantle unauthorized settler outposts in the West Bank, while the Palestinians pledged to crack down on anti-Israeli militants.

The plan largely foundered when each side accused the other of not fulfilling their part.

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"I have announced that the state of Israel will not build new settlements and will not confiscate land for this purpose and I intend to keep the obligation," Olmert said in the interview. But he acknowledged Israel was indeed not fully upholding its part of the road map because settlement construction continued.

"There is a certain contradiction in this between what we're actually seeing and what we ourselves promised," Olmert said. "We always complain about the (breached) promises of the other side. Obligations are not only to be demanded of others, but they must also be honored by ourselves. So there is a certain problem here."

But Israel believes a Bush letter to the Israeli government in 2004 "renders flexible to a degree what is written in the road map," Olmert said.

In that letter, Bush wrote that "existing Israeli population centers" should be considered when the final borders of a Palestinian state are set down. Israel takes this to mean it will be able to retain parts of the West Bank heavily populated by Israelis, and not have to transfer to the Palestinians all the territory Israel captured in 1967.

When Olmert was asked if he expects Israel and the Palestinians to finalize a deal in 2008, which both sides have said they believe is possible, Olmert would only say he hoped that would happen.

Bush "doesn't apply pressure. He would like (that timetable met). I don't know if I will be able to meet the timetable and I never promised that I would. I said that I hoped so, but I don't know," Olmert said. "Now, it may be that in the end it turns out that there is no chance."

No other American president has been as "systematically and consistently" supportive of Israel as Bush has been, Olmert said. "He's not doing a single thing that I don't agree to. He doesn't support anything that I oppose. He doesn't say a thing that he thinks will make life harder for Israel."

Olmert also said Israelis must understand that even their country's closest international allies want Israel to pull back in the West Bank and share Jerusalem, where Palestinians want to establish their capital.

When speaking of the future, "the world that is friendly to Israel ... speaks of Israel in terms of the '67 borders. It speaks of the division of Jerusalem," Olmert said.

 http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/01/04/africa/ME-GEN-Israel-Olmert.php