Gaffe overshadows Bush visit

On a landmark visit to the West Bank, President Bush said that any future Palestinian state must be a continuous territory without checkpoints. But, despite optimistic comments that there could be a deal on a Palestinian state by the end of the year, an off-the-cuff remark about checkpoints threatens to overshadow the trip. "You'll be happy to know, my whole motorcade of a mere 45 cars was able to make it through without being stopped," Bush said after being asked about the 30-minute journey from Jerusalem and Ramallah. "I'm not so exactly sure that's what happens to the average person." Bush was forced to travel by car to meet Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in the West Bank after his helicopter was grounded by bad weather. The journey took him through an Israeli security checkpoint and within sight of the separation barrier. Bush said that he could understand why Palestinians were "frustrated" by the checkpoints, but they were necessary to "create a sense of security for Israel." Al Jazeera's David Chater in west Jerusalem said that the remarks were extraordinary given the pain and humiliation that is caused at the checkpoints. "I remember once in Hawara, one of the checkpoints outside Nablus, and I was doing the story of a family who lost their main loved one... he was a cancer patient and he was told to get out of his car and walk across the checkpoint, and that killed him," he said. "That's the experience that most Palestinians have of these humiliating checkpoints... it was very much in bad taste and was a joke that will not have gone down well with anyone in Gaza or the occupied West Bank." In another comment likely to draw Palestinian ire, Bush said that Fatah and Hamas should leave behind unimplemented UN resolutions, such as those calling for the removal of Israeli settlements and a right of return for Palestinian refugees. "The UN deal didn't work in the past... this is an opportunity to move forward and negotiate a new deal," he said.