Secret Settlement Agreement

Over at American Footprints, Nadazhda is questioning why the Washington Post was sitting on information that the Bush administration made a secret agreement with Israeli to allow continued construction to accomodate "natural growth" in settlements Israel expected to keep following hypothetical final status negotiation. She also expresses indignation with the Bush administration for this agreement, in which I heartily join.

I thought about posting on the regional implications of this revelation, but I'm not sure there are any. We all knew Israel wanted to keep a number of settlement blocks and was trying to create facts on the ground to do so. Depending on the settlement areas to which Sharon's government applied this, there's nothing meaty there except for the Bush duplicity toward and betrayal of the Palestinians. The biggest issue is what happened in the collar around eastern Jerusalem, which Israel routinely seeks to cut off from its prospective Arab hinterland.