Bush's Mideast U-Turn - By Natan Sharansky and Bassem Eid
Bush's Mideast U-Turn By BASSEM EID AND NATAN SHARANSKY Wall St. Journal - February 11, 2008; Page A19 On June 24, 2002, President Bush presented his vision for an Israeli-Palestinian peace. That we both would have greeted Mr. Bush's speech with the same enthusiasm may come as a surprise. One of us is a former Soviet dissident who spent nine years in the Gulag and, after joining his people in Jerusalem , spent a decade in Israeli political life, serving as a cabinet minister during most of that time. The other is a Palestinian who has devoted his life to exposing human rights abuses perpetrated against his people, regardless of whether the government committing those abuses was Israeli or Palestinian. One is a Jew convinced of his people's just claim to the Land of Israel . The other is an Arab convinced of his people's just claim to the same land. Yet while we have real disagreements that would make an historic compromise very difficult and painful, we are fully in a...