TENSE WORDS from page 25

Sunday night at a hotel in Waco, 30
miles away, while virtually every other
world leader accorded the privilege of an
overnight stay in central Texas has slept
in the Crawford ranch's guest house.
A preparatory meeting Sunday night
between Sharon, U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley,
Bush's national security adviser, at a
dimly lit Waco bar-and-rib joint,
stretched to two hours as Secret Service
agents kept locals away. Participants
emerged grim-faced.
The grim looks reappeared when the
negotiators stood outside Bush's office
building, watching the two leaders deliv-
er their statements. Almost all of the
negotiators adhered to a White House-
imposed dress code meant to suggest
unanimity — dark blue jacket, open-
necked shirts the color of the Texas blue-
bonnets dotting the Bush ranch, and
khaki trousers — but the Israelis stood
to one side, the Americans to the other.
Hadley is to visit Israel next week to
resume the conversation.
Bush got no relief on the specific issue
that helped precipitate the recent ten-
sion: Israel's decision to add 3,500 apart-
ments in Ma'aleh Adumim, a major
West Bank settlement and Jerusalem
bedroom community that Israel intends

to keep in any final peace agreement.
The development would choke off a
major north-south West Bank artery.
Palestinians claim this would affect the
territorial integrity of the state they hope
to build, somethina Bush regards as crit-
ical to the success of
b the peace process.
Sharon turned the question around.
"We are very much interested that it will
be contiguity between Ma'aleh Adumim
and Jerusalem," he said, standing along-
side Bush.
There were areas of substantial agree-
ment: Bush restated his historic conces-
sion, made last year, that Israel's major
settlements are "facts on the ground"
that must be taken into account in any
final peace deal.
He also agreed to consider U.S. assis-
tance in developing the Negev and
Galilee, regions of Israel that are expect-
ed to absorb thousands of evacuated set-
tlers. A senior Israeli Treasury official is
to visit Washington next week to discuss
the parameters of such assistance.
Bush is biding his time until the Gaza
withdrawal. Sharon laughingly told
Israeli reporters that U.S. admonish-
ments about settlement expansion took
the mild parental tone of, "'We'll discuss
this later."
In his recent dealings with the United

States, Sharon repeatedly has stressed
that he must placate a restive Israeli right
wing before the settlement evacuation
this summer. He spoke Monday of a
"civil-war atmosphere" in Israel.
That's something Bush appreciates,
but he has his own political constraints.
Bush is trying to mend alliances with
Europe and the Arab world that were
fractured by the Iraq war, and he
believes that substantial progress on the
Israeli-Palestinian front would heal many
wounds.
Bush also believes that the death last
year of Abbas' predecessor, Yasser Arafat,
removed the principle obstacle to
progress. Rice followed up the summit
with phone calls to Abbas, as well
European and Arab foreign ministers.
Bush expects Sharon to change his
mind once the trauma of evacuating
Gaza is past. Delaying any Israeli action
until the Palestinians have fulfilled all
their commitments, he said, suggests "a
rather pessimistic point of view"
He glanced over at Sharon and con-
tinued, "I just suspect that if there is suc-
cess in Gaza, in other words, if there's a
state that's emerging, the prime minister
will have a different attitude about
whether or not it makes sense to contin-
ue the process."

MIMI COI-TEN MARKOFS

Forum On Geneva
Initiative

Oak Park — Ameinu, formerly the
Labor Zionist Alliance, will host
Daniel Levy and Rafi Dajani 2 p.m.
Sunday, April 17, at Congregation
Beth Shalom.
The topic will be "The Geneva
Initiative: A Grass Roots Initiative for
Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict."
Levy was the lead Israeli drafter of
the Geneva Initiative and now directs
policy planning and international
efforts at the Geneva campaign head-
quarters in Tel Aviv. Dajani is execu-
tive director of the American Task
Force on Palestine in Washington,
D.C.

Panel Explores Anti-
Semitism

West Bloomfield— On Sunday, April
17, 7 p.m., CHAIM-Children of
Holocaust Survivors Association In
Michigan and the Jewish Community
Center will sponsor a free program
on "Anti-Semitism Today: A Panel
Discussion" at the Jewish
Community Center, Maple and
Drake.
The community is invited. The
panelists will be Cindy Hughey,
Hillel director at Michigan State
University; Sharone Senk, associate
director of the Anti-Defamation
League; and David Blewitt, director
of the Ecumenical Institute in
Southfield.

Mayors Visit Israel

forget somethin
for the holidays...
like the food?
taking last minute orders
for all your Passover needs
.06**,
Call

2 48'59 2-0200

(oh, and don't forget to make your reservations for our
Passover Buffet dinner on Wednesday, April 27th
from ► :oo pm to 8:3o pm at B'nai Moshe.)

4/14
2005

26

Under the supervision of the Council of Orthodox Rabbis of Greater Detroit

Jerusalem/JTA — Some 70 mayors
from around the world are meeting in
Israel. The mayors on the weeklong
visit, which began Sunday, met with
Israeli President Moshe Katsav and
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.
Attendees include Southfield Mayor
Brenda Lawrence.
The mayors also will meet with
their Israeli counterparts and discuss
how Israel deals with political, eco-
nomic and social issues, and will visit
sites holy to Judaism, Islam and
Christianity.
The project was organized by the
American Jewish Congress-Council
for World Jewry and the municipality
of Jerusalem. The AJCongress' new
overseas partners, the Federation of
Jewish Communities of the Former
Soviet Union and the Union of
French Jewish Employers and
Professionals, helped as well.

