I swore to myself that I wouldn’t post on Israel and Palestine, but I have to chime in and say that I’m disgusted by President Bush’s support for the Ariel Sharon plan for stealing all the Palestinian land he can and telling the Palestinians to deal with it. The settlement movement has been working for years to establish “facts on the ground” and our current President is perfectly satisfied with rewarding them for doing so. In his statement today, President Bush made it clear that the new policy of the United States is to discard any role as an honest broker for peace between Israel and the Palestinians and to instead stand firmly behind Israel, regardless of its actions. I don’t think that’s good for us, and I don’t think that’s good for Israel. Honestly it looks to me like both Israel and the United States have given up on ever having anyone to negotiate with on the Palestinian side of things, so Israel will take what it wants and deal with the violence as best it can. Maybe that’s sensible for Likud, but I don’t like the repercussions for America. It’s also worth remembering that we have troops on the ground in Iraq who are in harm’s way, and that this move by Bush isn’t going to make things any easier for them.

Update: Electronic Intifada says that Sharon’s proposal isn’t too different from the other peace proposals that have been floated in the past (I wanted to find a pro-Palestinian site to gauge the reaction).