Road Map to Nowhere

I am thinking on going back to school to get at least some basics on journalism, I wish I could put in paper my ideas the way this lady does, what a wonderful note:

Posted on Fri, May. 16, 2003

A road map that won't be followed

By Trudy Rubin

President Bush has taken up the cause of Mideast peace and democracy with missionary zeal.

He has called for democratic change throughout the Mideast, led by postwar Iraq, and laid out a vision of a peaceful Palestine living alongside Israel. He has endorsed a Mideast "road map" that is supposed to lead to a Palestinian state by 2005, and full peace between the Arabs and Israel.

But the President's bright vision - like a balloon with a snapped cord - seems to be floating further and further from realities on Earth.

Nowhere is that more striking than in the case of the Palestinians and Israel. The postwar chaos in Iraq could still be contained by a radical shift in White House policy that puts the necessary military and financial resources into reconstruction. But the Israeli-Palestinian impasse threatens Israel's very future as well as the President's entire Mideast vision.

Yet Bush so far has seemed unwilling to use muscle to further the road map even though it is approaching a dead end.

The three-stage plan, put together by the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations, calls for each side to take parallel steps along the way. In Phase One, the Palestinians must halt terrorism against Israel, while Israel - at the same time - dismantles new settlement outposts on the West Bank and freezes expansion of established settlements.

The Palestinians have accepted the road map, but we may never know if they will crack down on terror. That's because Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has yet to accept the road map and rules out restraints on settlement building. He says this is not "on the horizon." He also says he expects no pressure from President Bush when he visits the White House next week.

If this is indeed the Bush position, it does no favors for Israel. The administration has worked hard to pressure the Palestinians to appoint a reformer, Mahmoud Abbas, as their first prime minister, thus partly sidelining Yasir Arafat. But Abbas cannot wage a civil war against Palestinian terror groups while Sharon encourages new settlements and settler roads that divide the West Bank into unconnected chunks.

The Palestinian people - even the most moderate among them - would not support such an internecine war while settlement building was continuing because they see the settlements as a creeping annexation of the West Bank. The main point of building settlements - as Sharon used to explain to journalists when he designed the West Bank grid back in 1978 - is to make it impossible for the Palestinians to have a state.

The roughly 200,000 settlers in 146 established settlements have become an ever more powerful political lobby under Sharon - and a key to his governing majority - even though poll after poll shows that a majority of Israelis would give up settlements for peace. But, as settlers add to the 90 or so new outposts built since March 2001, the prospects for a two-state solution dim.

All this is not to say the road map is perfect. It has flaws and may need revision. Any peace process, moreover, will ultimately hinge on whether Palestinians halt terrorism and fully accept the Jewish state.

But the concept of parallel steps to renew trust, especially in Phase One, is essential. And a settlement rollback wouldn't harm Israel's security; on the contrary, it is essential to Israel's ultimate survival.

A president who truly cared about Israel would lay out to the Israeli leader these harsh truths:

If settlements grow and rule out a viable peace, Israel will be left ruling over a huge, angry Palestinian population. Israel's largest daily paper, Yedioth Ahronoth, noted recently that Jews make up barely half of the 10.2 million people who live in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. Given high Palestinian birthrates, Jews will soon become a minority in a greater Israeli state.

Terrorism inside Israel will increase. There are worrisome signs that, for the first time, the Palestinian cause is becoming part of the international al-Qaeda holy war. Two British citizens of Pakistani origin recently carried out a suicide bombing attack in Tel Aviv. If Palestinian prime minister Abbas fails to deliver relief to his people, the whole concept of a two-state solution may soon go down with him.

At that point, endless West Bank violence - aired incessantly on Al-Jazeera and viewed by millions of young Arabs - will undercut efforts by Arab political reformers in Iraq and elsewhere. The widely held Arab belief that America made war in Iraq for oil and Israel will solidify.

These are the considerations that the President should lay before Prime Minister Sharon as they talk in the White House. How Bush handles the settlement issue will show whether he is really committed to Mideast peace and democracy.

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