Palestine: Sharon's legacy haunts Obama And Kerry

In an editorial - published on 14 May 2008 - former Jerusalem Post editor - David Horovitz - revealed the extent of the American resistance to remaining bound by President Bush's 2004 letter following a meeting with Bush in the White House with a group of Israeli journalists:

"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, however, has been known to minimise 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 had 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 realise 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 was far worse and more sinister than mere memory loss. An attempt was being made - as early as 2008 - to renege on America's clear and unequivocal commitments given to Israel as the price for Israel's total evacuation of Gaza.

Israel had already paid a high price relying on Bush's Congress-endorsed letter.

Gaza had become a de facto terrorist State - with Hamas firmly entrenched as the governing authority.

Israel had - since its evacuation of Gaza in 2005 - been subjected to a sustained 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 operating so freely from Gaza if the Israeli Army had remained there.

Israel's Prime Minister - Ehud Olmert - who succeeded Sharon - had neither forgotten nor overlooked the critical significance of President Bush's letter when agreeing to resume negotiations with the Palestinian Authority in 2007.

At the international conference held in Annapolis in November 2007 to announce a breakthrough in the resumption of those negotiations - Olmert told Bush and the world leaders gathered there that:

"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."

The subsequent failure of those negotiations can be directly attributed to the Palestinian Authority's refusal to countenance the Bush commitments made to Sharon.