Olmert Will Meet With Bush, Cheney

Prime Minister Olmert of Israel arrived in Washington yesterday to draw up a new blueprint for making peace with the Palestinian Arabs following the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip.In preparation for today’s White House talks with President Bush and Vice President Cheney, Mr. Olmert, 61, met yesterday with Secretary of State Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to develop a joint strategy aimed at strengthening President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority.Mr. Olmert said yesterday in New York that he plans to release some $562 million in customs and tax revenue that had been collected on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs and withheld while Hamas controlled the government. Mr. Abbas is working with a new Cabinet in the West Bank that has been purged of members belonging to Hamas, which Israel and the U.S. consider a terrorist organization.“We will be ready to discuss with Abbas the political horizon for what will eventually become the basis for a permanent agreement between us and the Palestinians,” Mr. Olmert told a meeting of Jewish leaders in Manhattan on Sunday.America joined the European Union in lifting an embargo on economic aid to the Palestinian Authority that had been imposed with the militant Hamas group won parliamentary elections last year.Mr. Bush is planning a speech next week to mark five years since he laid out his “road map” formula, which aimed to establish a Palestinian state living in peace beside Israel. Mr. Olmert said the new emergency government set up by Mr. Abbas in the West Bank represents an “opportunity” to make peace with moderate Palestinian Arabs.The downfall of the national unity government Hamas had established with Mr. Abbas’s Fatah movement and the violence with which Hamas took over Gaza changed Mr. Olmert’s agenda coming into his talks in Washington.While Mr. Olmert said he intended to spend time with Mr. Bush discussing the threats presented by Iran’s nuclear program and the prospects of making peace with Syria, the quickly changing dynamics in the Palestinian Arab arena will dominate his meetings with Mr. Bush, analysts said.“Everything’s been reshuffled,” Mark Heller, research director at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said in an interview. “If it wasn’t clear before, it’s now understood that they have to address two different Palestinian entities, one of which they don’t currently talk to.”

Olmert Will Meet With Bush, Cheney

Olmert Will Meet With Bush, Cheney

More from the New York Sun

Wynton Marsalis’s Homecoming Farewell

Trump, at Joint Press Conference with Mamdani, Expresses Optimism That Mayor Will Be a ‘Great One’

A Raid on the Presidency

In the Next 43 Days, Nobody Should Underestimate Trump and the GOP

Lula Touts Leftist Record With Mamdani as Polls Show Presidential Election a Toss-Up in Brazil

DOJ, USDA Join Forces at Animal Cruelty Strike Force Roundtable to Boost Federal Prosecutions

Leader of The Second Intifada or Hamas Could Win if Palestinian Elections Go Ahead

Iowa Republicans Begin Sounding Alarm on Iran War as a Senate Race and Two House Seats Fall Into Toss-Up Territory

More from the New York Sun

Wynton Marsalis’s Homecoming Farewell

Trump, at Joint Press Conference with Mamdani, Expresses Optimism That Mayor Will Be a ‘Great One’

A Raid on the Presidency

In the Next 43 Days, Nobody Should Underestimate Trump and the GOP

Lula Touts Leftist Record With Mamdani as Polls Show Presidential Election a Toss-Up in Brazil

DOJ, USDA Join Forces at Animal Cruelty Strike Force Roundtable to Boost Federal Prosecutions

Leader of The Second Intifada or Hamas Could Win if Palestinian Elections Go Ahead

Iowa Republicans Begin Sounding Alarm on Iran War as a Senate Race and Two House Seats Fall Into Toss-Up Territory