Has Obama Endorsed The 2004 Bush Letter To Sharon?

The issue of using the 1967 lines as borders in the negotiations between Israel and the Arabs in Judea and Samaria has been a point of contention--especially since the Obama administration has explicitly refused to recognize the letter of agreement between President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon in April 2004:

As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.

The Obama administration argued that the letter was never formally recognized as official US policy.

Apparently now it has.

It is now being reported that Netanyahu is saying that the Obama administration has ratified George Bush's 2004 letter to Ariel Sharon guaranteeing settlement blocs will remain part of Israel in any future peace deal:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday that he had reached a written agreement with the Obama administration according to which Israel would not be required to return to the 1967 borders in any future peace deal with the Palestinians. In addition, any future peace talks would take into account established "realities on the ground" - a term generally used in reference to Israel's large settlement blocs of Ariel, Maale Adumim and Gush Etzion.

Netanyahu's statements would mean an effective American ratification of a letter sent in 2004 by former U.S. President George W. Bush to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon which guaranteed that the settlement blocs would remain a part of Israel in any future peace agreement with the Palestinians. The current administration, under President Barack Obama, has not publicly endorsed Bush's letter to Sharon. In 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said there was no acknowledgment of any such agreement in the official negotiating record between Israel and the Bush administration. "There is no memorialization of any informal and oral agreements. If they did occur, which of course people say they did, they did not become part of the official position of the U.S. government," Clinton said.

If this report is accurate, it would seem to be the first time that in an effort to jumpstart the peace talks, Obama is doing more than requiring unilateral concessions from Israel. Instead, it is offering not just assurances, but making them more concrete.

Recall that the last time there was word of offering Israel something in order to get it to again freeze the settlements--but that broke down when Netanayahu insisted on it being in writing. This time, according the the report, the agreement is in writing.

Now let's see if it says what the reports says it does.

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