An excerpt of a piece by Prof Paul C Merkley which originally appeared in Israpundit.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR MAKES: Why has George W. Bush gone wobbly about rewarding Palestinian terrorism?Anyone who has ever published a book about Israel’s recent history soon learns that he has done a foolhardy thing, for Israel lives history at a faster pace than operates elsewhere in the world.

Last Spring (2004), I put my last changes into the page-proofs of my book American Presidents, Religion and Israel (Praeger, 2004) and the book went to press in August, 2004. The narrative section ends with President George W. Bush standing firm in support of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as the latter pursues a policy of refusing diplomacy with Yassir Arafat (alas, then still whinnying with us), who is continuing his habitual tactic of stirring up unremitting violence against the citizens of Israel while posing as a prince of peace. This shared posture of Bush and Sharon puts the President and the Prime Minister at odds with the UN, the EU, Canada (of course) and most of the chattering class everywhere in the free world – all of whom are demanding concessions from Israel in order to raise the esteem of the Palestinian leaders and to instill hope in the Palestinian people.

August, 2005, will be remembered as the moment when the same P.M. of Israel unilaterally dismantled Jewish settlements in Gaza and Northern Samaria, casting off before the whole world his former logic, so passionately and so relentlessly defended, that the settlements of Jewish people in what had once been Eretz Israel were for ever and that unilateral retreats would reward terrorists and confirm the Palestine Authority in its conviction that no one seriously expects them to be responsible for the behaviour of the people they claim to govern. As Sharon threw the keys to Gaza and Northern Samaria to the hordes of terrorists, President Bush agreed that all was unfolding as it should – and then walked away from questioners who asked how re-establishing al-Qaeda next door to Israel fitted the grand strategy announced in the wake of September 11, 2001.

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Excerpt reprinted with the consent of both the author and original publisher.