By Ramzy Baroud

The Bush administration's policy in the Middle East remains consistent with its support for the actions carried out by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government.

The latest "controversy", ignited by Israel's clandestine scheme to expand its illegal settlements in the West Bank, attests to the above assertion.

The record shows that President George Bush's commitment and loyalty to Israel have pressed him to take measures never taken by any other American president. The imaginary line of impartiality and decency that has allowed, even if timidly, successive US governments to allege their legitimacy as "honest brokers" in Israel's conflicts with Palestinians and Arabs was forever crossed. This historic pass-over could not have happened if it were not for the ideological devotion exhibited by the pro-Israeli neoconservative circle currently overrunning the US government.

Thus, in his April 2004 meeting with Sharon at the White House, Bush declared that it was "unrealistic to expect a full and complete return" by Israel to the pre-June 1967 borders. Bush's disregard for international law, human rights and for the noble struggle of generations of Palestinians can hardly be excused or tolerated.

Equally alarming, however, is to see the US so condescendingly absolving Israel of its commitment to international law as a member of the United Nations.

By releasing Israel from its responsibility regarding the most fundamental step that could ensure a just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Bush has sent a bold-faced and offensive signal: that Israel has the US government's support and blessing in building or expanding its settlements in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem - all prohibited under international law.

Thus, it should not come as a total surprise that the Israeli government is actively building 3,500 new housing units on stolen West Bank land, so as to connect the ever-expanding illegal Jewish settlement of Maaleh Adumim to East Jerusalem.

While the project shall "cement" Israel's hold on "greater Jerusalem", it will completely isolate Arab East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. And as Israel's illegal wall is actively slicing up the West Bank into many little chunks, undercutting any possibility for a Palestinian state with territorial contiguity, the settlement expansion around East Jerusalem is aimed at rendering the latter a non-option as a capital of a future state of Palestine.

The Israeli action has only one explanation: a Palestinian state is nowhere on the Sharon government's agenda, neither now nor when the "peace talks" kick into full gear. In fact, the ruse of the peace talks was devised for this exact same reason: to win Israel time so that its colonial project would be complete, with Palestinians caged in small and scattered bantustans, while the Jewish settlements and walls become immovable "facts on the ground".

The news of the Israeli proposals to build two new "neighbourhoods" in the West Bank, as reported by the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth on March 21, was preceded a day earlier by a report in Haaretz about extensive construction in settlements taking place across the West Bank.

Aerial photographs commissioned by the Israeli defence ministry confirmed the active construction allegations made by Israel's former chief prosecutor Talia Sasson two weeks earlier. Sasson exposed the Sharon government's "institutional lawbreaking" and theft of private Palestinian land.

Israel's intentions were very clear from the outset, however, and those who for a moment believed in Sharon's change of heart - that he would be abandoning the settlements projects, as opposed to being the settlement's "godfather" - were sadly mistaken. After all, the comments made by Sharon's top advisor Dov Weissglas and cited by Haaretz a few months ago, were anything but vague: "What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until Palestinians turn into Finns."

Worth noticing in the above statement, aside from its dismissal of any Israeli good intentions in this period of "hope", is that the US government was a major participant in the swindle-the-Palestinian scheme currently under way.

Those who wished to dismiss Weissglas' comments as unrepresentative of US policy on the settlements were up for a major shock on March 25 when Israeli Public Radio interviewed US Ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer. "US policy is the support that the president has given for the retention by Israel of the major Israeli population centres as the outcome of negotiations," he said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's fatuous attempt to defuse Kurtzer's statement was of little relevance, considering that the US government's Middle East policy has been decidedly consistent with the comments made by its ambassador in Israel.

Allowing the retention of "major" Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and dubbing as "unrealistic" an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 border, and incessantly denying the Palestinian refugees the right of return (on the basis that it threatens Israel's Jewish identity) makes one wonder what is left for Palestinians to gain from the anxiously awaited peace talks?

And, considering the US government's primary role in the ongoing attempt to hoodwink the Palestinian leadership and its unrestricted support of Sharon's government in defiance of international law and human rights, one can only hope that the Americans will understand why their government is hated so much and why the anti-American sentiment, specially in the Middle East is on the rise.

Isn't it about time for American policy makers and media pundits to quit scrutinising Osama Ben Laden tapes and probe no further than Washington's own foreign policy mischief?

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The writer is a veteran Arab-American journalist, the editor-in-chief of PalestineChronicle.com and a programme producer at Al Jazeera Satellite Television.

This article was published in the Tuesday, April 5, 2005 edition of the Jordan Times. It is used here with permission.