Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon also expressed support to a “two-state” solution and to giving the Palestinians “contiguous” territory for their state.
The promises from Israeli leader Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas set in motion a US-backed roadmap for peace and Palestinian statehood, cementing Mr Bush’s new role as chief mediator in the conflict.
“Great hope and change is coming to the Middle East,” President Bush said before the two prime ministers shook hands for the first time in public at the three-way summit in the Jordanian Red Sea port city of Aqaba.
“All sides have made important commitments and the United States will strive to see these commitments fulfilled,” the US president said after meeting the two prime ministers.
In closing speeches at a palace overlooking the Gulf of Aqaba, Mr Sharon and Mr Abbas said they both envisioned a time when Israeli and Palestinian states would live side by side in peace.
But key questions remained over whether Mr Abbas would be able to make good on his vows to persuade militants to stop attacking Israelis in a 32-month-old Palestinian uprising for statehood.
“We will never be ready to lay down arms until the liberation of the last centimetre of the land of Palestine,” Hamas official Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi said. Islamic Jihad, another group sworn to Israel’s destruction, followed suit.
The Palestinians have also raised doubts about Mr Sharon’s commitment to a two-state solution and taking the politically risky move of dismantling settlements whose establishment he has long championed.
Several thousand Israelis gathered in occupied Al Quds on Wednesday evening to express opposition to giving up settlements. One poster read: “No to giving them a Palestinian state”. Another declared: “Palestinian state - disaster for the Israeli state”.
The roadmap charts the creation of a Palestinian state in 2005 after Israel and the Palestinians complete a series of reciprocal confidence-building steps that include a freeze on Jewish settlement expansion.
SHARON’S PLEDGE: In his statement to cameras as Bush, Abbas and host King Abdullah of Jordan stood beside him at separate lecterns, Sharon said: “I want to reiterate that Israel is a society governed by the rule of law...Thus we will begin immediately to evacuate unauthorized outposts.”
Mr Sharon was referring to mainly sparsely populated hilltop settlements established without Israeli government permission in the West Bank after March 2001, when Mr Sharon came to power, and which the roadmap mandates must be scrapped.
He did not say how many outposts — there are an estimated 60 — would be uprooted, a move that will anger far-right members of his ruling coalition.
“We can also reassure our Palestinian partners that we understand the importance of territorial contiguity in the West Bank for a viable Palestinian state,” Sharon said in remarks that could suggest that some long-established settlements might be evacuated as part of a permanent peace accord.
The international community views as illegal all the settlements Israel planted on land it seized in the 1967 war. Israel disputes this.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath described as unprecedented Sharon’s “very clear commitment and recognition of an independent Palestinian state and very clear talk of ending settlement activity”.
NEW STRATEGY: In comments likely to please Mr Sharon and Mr Bush, the Palestinian premier pledged in his statement to exert “full efforts” to end “the militarization” of the uprising.
“The armed intifada must end and we must resort to peaceful means to achieve our goals,” Mahmoud Abbas said, effectively calling for the culmination of a decades-old armed struggle for statehood.
The Red Sea summit and Tuesday’s meeting between Bush and Arab leaders in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh marked Mr Abbas’s debut on the world stage. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, shunned by the US and Israel over his alleged support of violence, was not invited.
The roadmap and Bush’s first presidential visit to the Middle East underscored his new strategy of stronger personal involvement in peacemaking following the war in Iraq, which touched off anger in the Arab world.
But he also risked plunging into the Middle East quagmire where his predecessors became bogged down.—Reuters