President Bush is set to make a major speech on prospects for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The president is going to talk tomorrow about the Middle East, about the Israeli-Palestinian issue,” Stephen Hadley, Bush’s national security adviser, told CNN on Sunday. “He is going to reaffirm his commitment to the two-state solution for that issue, a democratic Palestine living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a relative moderate, last month fired the Cabinet led by Hamas, a terrorist group, after Hamas forces drove his followers out of the Gaza Strip. He then named a government led by Salam Fayyad, a respected technocrat.
Hadley described the circumstances as an “opportunity” to support “their effort to establish a democratic, effective government that can provide security for the Palestinian people and the region.”
