AQABA: Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spent months trying to avoid the June 4 summit with George Bush to launch the US-led “roadmap” to the creation of a Palestinian state. The Israeli premier persuaded the US president to delay publication of the document three times and cancelled a trip to Washington last month ostensibly because of a new wave of terror.

But on Wednesday he was forced to read the script the White House all but wrote for him by committing himself not only to the creation of a Palestinian state but one that is viable and contiguous and not squeezed between those individual Jewish settlers determined to claim every hilltop as Israeli land.

Mr Sharon fell short on only one count — he refused to say that it would be independent.

But off stage, despite the positive aspects of his script, he started backtracking.

In a bizarre twist, the Israeli prime minister’s office issued what amounted to a clarification of his speech before he even made it by saying that when he referred to a Palestinian state he meant one that is demilitarized and that will be the only home for the Palestinian diaspora.

Mr Sharon had notably made no such qualification in his speech, apparently because the Americans told both parties to steer clear of demands about the right of return for Palestinian refugees to land they once owned in Israel. Mr Sharon’s office also went on to say that by “viable” he meant an “interim” state.

The Palestinians said they were not particularly disturbed, and that both clarifications had been made to temper criticism by the Israeli right. They noted that Mr Sharon’s commitment is now on the record to a US president, and that the Americans had forced him to go further and faster than he wanted.

Above all, they took that to answer the single most important question of the summit for the Palestinians — is Mr Bush serious about confronting a reluctant Israeli prime minister?

“This is not a conflict between two equal sides, it’s a conflict between an occupier and an occupied,” said Michael Tarazi of the Palestinian negotiating team. “We are hoping that the role of the US will be to correct the imbalance of power between a very strong Israel and a very weak Palestine. We are now confident that Bush is serious.”

That belief was reinforced at Mr Bush’s summit with friendly Arab leaders on Tuesday when Egyptian television accidentally captured the American president during a private conversation as he dropped formality for an extraordinary invocation of God.

The Palestinian foreign minister, Nabil Sha’ath, said he recognized that the Americans were unlikely to deliver what the Palestinians desire — all of the land occupied in 1967.

“The proof of whether what we heard today is really the road to peace — the end of the occupation started in 1967 and the establishment of a Palestinian state — will only come in time. But I think we have enough today to give us a real opportunity for hope,” he said.

A crucial first step was Mr Sharon’s commitment after months of prevarication to begin dismantling the estimated 120 Jewish outposts in the occupied territories that are illegal under Israeli law. His government has identified 17 initially, some of which are either not manned permanently or are only home to a handful of people.

But the real test will be whether he also prevents new outposts being thrown up or uses the inevitable confrontations with rightwing settlers, who are already calling Mr Sharon “a traitor”, as a pretext to draw the process out.

Israeli officials say Mr Sharon met last week with settler leaders and told them that, under American pressure, some of the more established settlements which are home to about 220,000 settlers will also have to go to make way for a Palestinian state.

Yet just a few weeks ago the Israeli administration evidently felt confident that a combination of the presence of hawks in the Bush administration, the mobilisation of support in Congress and the next year’s election in the US would contain White House pressure for Mr Sharon to commit himself to the peace process.

The Israeli government had mobilized such influential organizations as the American Israeli Political Action Committee against the roadmap, and had persuaded dozens of congressmen and senators to warn the president “not to jeopardize Israel’s security”.

The concern for the Palestinians now is that Mr Bush keeps up the pressure on Israel, as his father did.

In a conversation with the Palestinian finance minister in Washington last month, Mr Bush dismissed concerns that he would be disinclined to confront the Israeli government in an election year by saying that only 9 per cent of American Jews voted for him “and it can’t get worse than that”.

Mr Sha’ath, however, noted that the process would be overseen by the two Bush administration officials that the Israelis once said were of no relevance to the American policy on Israel — Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.