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Road Map To Peace Goes Nowhere
Charley Reese
In order for President Bush's allegedly non-negotiable road map to peace to work, he will have to put tremendous pressure on the Israeli government to comply with it. He won't do that. Therefore, it will fail.
While the Palestinians have accepted it, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has 15 objections to it. Even before it was published, the Israeli lobby persuaded a majority of the captive Senate and House to sign a letter to Bush complaining that the road map was unjust. Practically every Jewish organization in America has objected to it, and this prompted 14 individual Jewish philanthropists to sign a public letter supporting it. You would never know it from watching television, which gives airtime to Israeli shills, but the Jewish community in America is not monolithic. There are plenty of American Jews who support peace efforts, and they catch hell from the "Israel Right or Wrong but Israel Always" crowd.
For this peace process to work, the Israelis and the Palestinians must take action in parallel, and that, of course, is precisely what Sharon objects to. His tactic of avoiding peace negotiations altogether has been to claim that Israel will do nothing until the Palestinians completely and totally stop all acts of violence directed against Israel.
With the Palestinian Authority decimated by Israeli attacks, this, of course, is an impossibility. It makes the entire peace process hostage to even a handful of individuals among 2 million Palestinians. Actually, I misspoke when I said Sharon's position was that Israel would do nothing. In fact, Sharon's plan is that Israel will continue to shoot Palestinian children, peace activists and journalists, assassinate Palestinian leaders, demolish Palestinian homes, make mass arrests and keep the Palestinians under curfew and unable to function economically. In other words, to provoke Palestinians to violence.
Just put yourself in the position of the new Palestinian prime minister. You're being told that you have to persuade Palestinians to surrender and cease all resistance while Israeli attacks and abuse continue unabated. That's an impossible job. To sell anything, you have to show people that there are benefits to buying it. What are the benefits to surrendering your weapon if the Israelis continue to brutalize and occupy your country?
Sharon's idea of "peace" is the same as Gen. William Sherman's idea of peace with Native Americans. Sharon believes the only good Palestinian is a dead one, but he will settle for a cowed and broken people confined to unlivable reservations. When one deals with Israeli leaders, one must always watch what they do and pay no attention to what they say. They are strong believers in what they call "establishing facts on the ground." That's why they've continued to expand illegal settlements and brutalize and impoverish the Palestinians. A viable Palestinian state is the last thing the Israeli government wants to see.
This puts Sharon in direct conflict with President Bush. The last time they were in conflict, when the president publicly and strongly ordered Sharon to pull his troops out of the West Bank, Sharon humiliated Bush by ignoring him. Since then, Bush has cowed in his corner like a whipped dog with his tail between his legs, leaving Sharon free to make Palestinians' lives a living hell.
So what does all this mean for the average American? Well, it means the U.S. government will lose what's left of its credibility. People around the world will see that not only were there no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but that George Bush's promise to settle the Israeli-Palestinian issue was also nothing but baloney. They will correctly conclude that the Israeli tail wags the U.S. dog. That will make foreign policy and even foreign travel in some areas extremely difficult and dangerous.
Without settling the Israeli-and-Palestinian issue, there is no way to bring stability to the Middle East, no matter how many governments we overthrow. The president cannot achieve his stated policy goals without butting heads with Sharon, and frankly, I don't think Bush has the guts to do it. This is one case where I sincerely hope that I am wrong.
© 2003 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.