NO BETTER DATE THAN JUNE 24

By David Parsons

22 May 2003

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon should respond by seeking to reschedule his recently postponed meeting with US President George W. Bush for the highly symbolic date of June 24 at the White House, to reinforce his message that the roadmap does not reflect the “vision” of peace that Bush laid out on that fine summer day exactly one year earlier. 

Only three weeks after its publication in late April, the long-awaited roadmap has hit some major potholes, most notably a jarring series of Palestinian suicide bombings in a span of 48 hours earlier this week that killed 12 Israelis and wounded scores more.

The “new” Palestinian leadership under Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas is refusing to begin a crackdown on the Palestinian terror militias, as demanded in the opening stages of the roadmap, until Israel formally accepts the three-phase plan in toto.

But the Sharon government says that while it accepts the roadmap in principle, it has some 15 reservations that it wants incorporated into the document before officially endorsing it. Otherwise, the current roadmap is bound to end up as road-kill if Sharon is forced to present it to his cabinet.

The Bush team is anxious to find a way out of this embarrassing corner and some media reports say it is opting, unsurprisingly, to lean on Israel.

When US Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Jerusalem some ten days ago, Arab capitals complained that he failed to secure Sharon’s explicit approval for the plan. Washington explained, however, that Israel’s official acceptance of the roadmap was not as important as its decision to begin implementing it with concrete steps on the ground.

But the administration has now reversed that position under intense Arab pressure, according to several press accounts, and is seeking some formula whereby Sharon will voice his endorsement of the roadmap while somehow preserving his reservations for another day.

This could come as early as next week when Bush travels to Europe for a G-8 summit. On the sidelines of this event, the US administration is considering a three-way meeting with Sharon and Abbas in Geneva in the hope that the Israeli premier will be persuaded to utter some magic words that will remove any excuse the Palestinians have for moving ahead with their end of the bargain.

But the stakes are too high for Israel to commit itself to this flawed version of the roadmap, and the Palestinians, as history plainly shows, will inevitably come up with new excuses for inaction.

In his landmark policy statement last June 24, President Bush announced that these sorts of games were up with the Palestinians. He reiterated his commitment to the vision of two states – Israel and Palestine – living side-by-side in peace and security, but conditioned US support for a future Palestinian state on the emergence of a new, democratic leadership untainted by corruption and terror.

None of this has happened – in spite of what some have billed as “reforms” in the Palestinian camp.

Abbas acknowledged on Tuesday that he is still the deputy of PLO leader (and terror chief) Yasser Arafat – just as he has been for decades, including when the two conspired to tank the Camp David talks in July 2000. "We do not do anything without his [Arafat's] approval," Abbas told Reuters.

And the new de facto interior minister, Mohammed Dahlan, is still the same Palestinian security thug that got rich quick under Oslo and oversaw the “revolving door” jails in Gaza that never seemed able to hold his childhood friend Mohammad Deif of Hamas bomb-making fame. Dahlan’s highly anticipated plan for dismantling the terror militias – the key Palestinian contribution to the roadmap’s success – is simply to absorb them into the Palestinian police. Give Hamas uniforms, and the streets are safe again!?

Likewise, the road map drafted by the US State Department and its Quartet partners of the United Nations, European Union and Russia does not reflect the Bush “vision” enunciated last June. Among other things, it calls for parallel implementation by Israel and the Palestinians of its various phases, whereas the Bush speech preconditioned any progress towards Palestinian statehood on the Palestinians first stamping out terror and presenting Israel with a new and reliable negotiating partner.

The roadmap also demands that Israel commit from the outset to recognizing a Palestinian state, while at the same time leaving the Jewish state vulnerable to a possible flood of Palestinian refugees – or renewed violence should Israel resist such a demographic implosion.

US officials bristle at Israeli suggestions that there is daylight between the roadmap and Bush’s address last June. And yet it is hard to reconcile that while the speech set clear conditions for American support for a Palestinian state, the roadmap insists Israel immediately endorse such a state without condition.

Sharon says he can live with Bush’s vision of a two-state solution spelled out last June 24, and that he can even win cabinet approval for the roadmap if it is modified to address his concerns.

To press home his point, Sharon should request that a rescheduled meeting with the US President take place on the symbolic date of June 24 at the White House, thereby focusing attention on the sane policies articulated on that historic date last year which somehow got compromised in the drafting of the roadmap.

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