| January 10, 2008 Bush: Now is time to make difficult choices in Mideast
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RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - President Bush, summing up meetings
with both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, said Thursday
that a peace accord will require "painful political concessions"
by each. Resolving the status of Jerusalem will be tough, he said,
and he called for the end of the "occupation" of Arab land by the
Israeli military.
"Now is the time to make difficult choices," Bush said after a
first-ever visit to the Palestinian territories, which followed
separate meetings with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem the day before.
Bush is in the Mideast for eight days, trying to bolster his
goal of achieving a long-elusive Mideast peace agreement by the end
of his presidency in a year. Speaking at his hotel in Jerusalem, he
said again that he thinks that is possible.
The president outlined U.S. expectations for the resolution of
some of the hardest issues in the violent conflict, one of the
world's longest-running and most intractable.
Bush said that disputed territory must be mutually negotiated,
but he said "any agreement will require adjustments" to the
borders drawn for Israel in the late 1940s. He was referring to
Israeli neighborhoods on disputed lands that Israel would keep when
an independent Palestinian state is formed.
At the same time, Bush reiterated that any viable Palestinian
state must be "contiguous," saying Palestinians deserve better
than a "Swiss cheese" state.
But offered no
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