Israel Matzav

Is the Road Map's Moment Gone?

Israel Matzav

In the Washington Post, Jim Hoagland asks, Is the Road Map's Moment Gone?

I don't agree with a lot of he says (the parts I have edited out), but it is clear to me that the answer to the question is yes.

The United States, its European and Arab allies, and the United Nations have labored for four months to turn Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip into a catalyst for the creation of an independent, viable Palestinian state. They are visibly failing.

Law and order have disappeared in the Gaza territory since the Israeli withdrawal. Kidnappings and gunfights, not campaign rallies, are the tools of electioneering there. Financial mismanagement by Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority has forced the World Bank to freeze $60 million in budget support and effectively move the PA toward bankruptcy in a matter of weeks.

The spiral toward chaos in Gaza and Ariel Sharon's sudden incapacitation by a severe stroke are destabilizing blows to President Bush's proclaimed strategy for transforming the Middle East into a zone of democracies. Bush must reassess whether he can get there from here.

With Sharon in power, the odds on the "road map" diplomatic process delivering the democratic Palestinian state that Bush and Sharon conditionally endorse were slim. Without Sharon in power, the odds drop to virtually zero.

...

Sharon's incapacitation and the Gaza upheavals now call that opening into question. No other Israeli politician has the domestic support, the audacity and the force of personality to bulldoze forward historic change in the West Bank by the end of Bush's term. Moreover, the turmoil in Gaza is closing the window of international support for such change.

The road map, like most formulas for peacemaking, is based on the commendable premise that everyone deserves a second or even third chance. Right now the Palestinians are severely testing that article of faith -- at a moment when they have everything to gain from taking responsibility for their affairs and demonstrating political maturity.

Forcing Egyptian police officers and European Union observers to flee their posts for safety hardly suggests maturity. Neither does the decision by the Palestinian Authority to raise salaries and break its commitment to live within the large aid flows that international donors provide. That act triggered the freeze on budget support by the World Bank.

After Yasser Arafat died, "we hoped for new momentum in the direction of governmental reforms and the fight against corruption," World Bank representative Nigel Roberts told the Israeli daily Haaretz this week. But "Arafatism" lives on without Arafat and has grown worse, Roberts added.

Instead of moving to transform themselves into the nucleus of one of the Arab world's first true democracies -- as Bush, Sharon and their road-map partners pretended the Palestinians quickly could -- the Palestinian territories continue to be angry, explosive ghettos. In Gaza, gunmen who recently were receiving financial rewards for attacking Israelis are now "unemployed" and threaten their neighbors and the Palestinian Authority.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:37 PM