Palestine - will Sharon's legacy be Obama's downfall?

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

Gaza has become a de facto terrorist Palestinian State with Hamas now firmly entrenched as the governing authority.

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

Gaza eventually paid the price for these gross acts of terrorism with Israel’s invasion of Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009. However Gaza still remains defiant and unbowed.

Israel now needs to make it perfectly clear to President Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, that any attempt to resile from President Bush’s letter to Ariel Sharon will torpedo the prospects for any further negotiations. President Obama then will have no one but himself to blame for bringing his own plans to a premature and ignominious end.

Israel's former Prime Minister - Ehud Olmert - neither forgot - nor overlooked - the critical significance of President Bush’s letter to permitting the resumption of any ongoing negotiations.

President Bush and Ms Rice were quick to claim credit for bringing Israel and the Palestinian Authority together at the international conference held in Annapolis in November 2007 to announce the breakthrough in the resumption of those negotiations.

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

"The negotiations will be based on previous agreements between us, UN 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 the negotiations at Annapolis can be directly attributed to Israel’s insistence that America remain committed to the terms of President Bush’s letter to Ariel Sharon - terms that the Palestinian Authority was not prepared to countenance and which led to the breakdown of those negotiations.

As President Obama gets ready to lay out his own proposals for achieving the two-state solution, he needs to be reminded of the commitment made by his predecessor to Ariel Sharon. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, must insist on President Obama remaining committed to supporting the outline of any proposed resolution to the conflict as clearly laid out in President Bush’s letter.

Jews have accumulated many memories - both pleasant and unpleasant - since losing their State, being expelled from there 2,000 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 Obama and his Secretary of State would do well to remember - and heed - this lesson as they strive to develop their own plan for ending the conflict.