Guess who drew the road map?, By Anne Bayefsky

Jerusalem Post ^ | Jun. 11, 2003 | Anne Bayefsky

[yonif]

Only three months after the UN Security Council told President George W. Bush to take his deck of cards and get out, it is hard to believe that the president now appears as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's lackey in the Middle East.

For popular consumption, in America the road map is called the "US" road map, but its authorship is not American. It is a Quartet road map, the US being only one of four members, along with the UN, the European Union (EU), and Russia.

In essence the road map was substantially written by UN players and the European Union between April 2002 (and the UN-led Jenin deceit), and the fall. American negotiators pre-occupied with Iraq made further amendments in late 2002, but the guts of the map have never changed and are not consistent with the president's June 24, 2002 address.

The road map fundamentally alters the Middle East peace process, and in so doing drives a stake into the heart of the war against terrorism.

The first seismic shift is from a negotiated settlement to imposed solutions. Remember that as recently as November 19, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell stated: "Palestinians must accept that they can only achieve their goals through negotiation. That was the essence of the agreements... in Oslo in 1993. There is no other way but direct negotiation in an atmosphere of stability and nonviolence."

By contrast, the road map puts negotiated outcomes at the end of the road calling only in the second-to-last paragraph of the last phase for "a settlement negotiated between the parties." Before such negotiations the road map calls for an "international conference convened by the Quartet in consultation with the parties."

Israelis can be dragged to a conference where the demographics, like those in the UN, are totally lopsided. The US is also not immune to the pressures of an international conference.

Imposed solution number one, before any serious trading begins, is the achievement of the primary Palestinian goal: The road map speaks of the "creation of an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders" by December 2003 not 2005, as is constantly misreported.

The word "provisional" never appears before the word "state." Full statehood does not require fully defined borders, as was apparent with the creation of Israel itself. The map further insists: "Quartet members promote international recognition of [the] Palestinian state, including possible UN membership."

Therefore General Assembly resolutions in the fall of 2003 can be expected to endorse the road map and its call for the creation of a Palestinian state by December. No Israeli approval is required for a declaration of independence by the Palestinian Authority. The PLO did so in Algiers in 1988. This time UN member states, supported by the road map and these resolutions, will be encouraged to recognize the state and accord it UN membership.

Given the US is routinely outvoted and outmaneuvered at the UN, with the occasional exception in the Security Council, it is highly unlikely to be able to stop this UN-driven scenario if it doesn't apply the brakes very quickly.

WHICH BRINGS us to the ability to apply brakes at all. The road map from the outset requires "Quartet representatives [to] begin informal monitoring and consult with the parties on establishment of a formal monitoring mechanism." No Israeli agreement is required for international monitors. The UN and the EU continue to seek a part in the monitoring role, despite US leadership.

This would allow them to play a part in assessing whether, for example, the Palestinian Authority has satisfied obligations to "begin sustained, targeted and effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror." There should be no mystery about what international monitors, which include in any capacity the UN and the EU will produce. The UN has no definition of terrorism. UN member states continue to insist that blowing up Israelis is one thing, terrorism another.

The UN Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution on April 15 of this year which affirmed the legitimacy of suicide bombing or, in UN-speak, "all available means including armed struggle" to resist "foreign occupation and for self-determination."

All European Union members of the commission including Britain and France the only exception being Germany refused to vote against the resolution and merely abstained.

So when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said at Aqaba, on behalf of Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority: "We will continue to fight the scourge of terrorism against humanity and reject the culture of extremism and violence in any form or shape from whatever source or place, regardless of justifications or motives," his language was deliberate sophistry.

The Arab Terrorism Convention stipulates their real views, repeated by Saudi officials to the 2003 UN Commission on Human Rights: "We should distinguish between the phenomenon of terrorism and the right of peoples to achieve self-determination."

Just as UN bodies dispute the idea of Israelis as victims, they deny Israelis the practical necessities of self-defense. UN spokespersons repeatedly blame Israel for the deaths of Palestinian civilians used as human shields by their terrorist brethren. They prefer to ignore the Geneva Convention provision denying immunity to terrorists. It permits the proportionate use of force, even where loss of civilian life is "expected."

The likelihood that international monitors operating in this environment will fairly evaluate either Palestinian compliance with ending terrorism or satisfaction of the road map's requirement that Israel "take no action undermining trust" is nil.

For all those at the UN fretting over the loss of a terrorist state in Iraq, a Palestinian replacement is shortly at hand. Israeli self-defense will soon mean violating international borders.

It is not surprising that Arab states are happy to tell the president they are all for the road map. What is surprising is that the president is too.

The writer is an international lawyer and professor at York University, Toronto, Canada. She represented the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists at the Durban NGO Forum, and UN Watch at the World Conference Against Racism.

[yonif]

Ping.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[LarryM]

Again, Bush's forcing of the road map on Israel was the greatest act of appeasement and cowardice in the history of mankind. It even goes beyond Chamberlain's surrender at Munich.

[MoJo2001]

Terrorism has won out so far. It is a sad state of affairs when we criss cross God's Earth destroying those that want to kill us (the same people I might add that would like to see the elimination of Jews everywhere) and then we stand here and tell Israel that it is "unhelpful" to the peace process. Well, I'll tell you what the hell is "unhelpful"; but no one in Washington will listen. I'd be talking to the wall. If and when the damn wall wakes up, you know where to find me.

[Maximum Leader]

What the rest of the world doesn't understand is that the American public (and Congress) won't let the president impose on Israel any "peace plan" that threatens Israel's security.

It isn't the Jewish lobby that is behind this (the Jewish population is, what, 3% of the US population?), but rather the Christian majority.

Most Christian Americans identify with Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East and one of the few countries in the world that back our war on terrorism 100%.

So Bush and Powell can pressure Israel as much as they like, but if they don't have the American people with them, they can't make it stick.

[axxmann]

So Bush and Powell can pressure Israel as much as they like, but if they don't have the American people with them, they can't make it stick.

Not trying to be confrontational here, but...if what you say is true, how did Clinton and Carville successfully elect Barak?

[Salem]

"...but if they don't have the American people with them, they can't make it stick."

Just call this American Teflon in that regard.

[dennisw]

Thanks .....explains a lot. Let us not forget this not a USA only plan. The EU (rotters that they are) and the Russians are in on this scheme too as parties interested in tormenting the Jews of the Middle East until they make suicidal concessions to the Jihadists of the Middle East.

[Thinkin' Gal]

...it is hard to believe that the president now appears as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's lackey in the Middle East.

At least it may explain the monkey pox in middle America. :-/

[Maximum Leader]

Well that was pulling the wool over the Israeli electorate's eyes, not America's. And besides, Barak wasn't long for public office once he and Clinton tried to push their peace plan.

You raise a good point though, if the Israeli government caves, then all bets are off. If Sharon stands firm, Congress won't endorse any peace plan.

[TLBSHOW]

what do you expect from the UN man?

[razorbak]

Zech.12:1 The burden of the word of the LORD against Israel. Thus says the LORD, who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him:
2 "Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem.
3 "And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it. 8 "In that day the LORD will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; the one who is feeble among them in that day shall be like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the Angel of the LORD before them.
9 "It shall be in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.
10 "And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.

[dennisw]

Spain's Foreign Minister Josep Pique, right, pauses as in the background an unidentified member of the Spanish delegation kisses Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, left, following their meeting in Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Thursday Jan. 17, 2002. Pique is on a week-long tour of the Middle East in an European diplomatic effort to search for new ways to revive the Mideast peace process. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

Palestinian boys check the damage to the car of senior Hamas militant Bakar Hamdan after it was hit by two Israeli missiles fired from a helicopter, at Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, January 25, 2002. An Israeli helicopter gunship killed the senior Palestinian militant in a missile strike in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, drawing vows to unleash disaster on the Israeli people to avenge the attack. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadalla

 

 

[dennisw]

Cup of trembling bump!

[enuu]

You're right. WHY is our president doing this? I have been wondering why this idiotic, hypocritical policy ever since November 2001 when Powell announced the Administration's endorsement of a palistinian state. Then I thought maybe a method to the madness, it appeared as a reward to terrorists, but really we were going to make the Palestinians stop terror as a condition to getting any movement toward a state. BUT all we do is capitulate to the terrorists and tie Israel's hands. Bush is so anti-terror when it comes to the US, fearless about going to Iraq, etc. Why is he kow-towing to the Arabs and letting Israel be destroyed? What is the strategy?

[itsahoot]

What is the strategy?

Sussh....Super Smart, Super Secret plan at work.

[beckett]

Israel's survival depends on its actions over the next two or three years. As Ron Rosenbaum wrote in the Observer recently (the piece, 'Second Holocaust,' Roth's Invention, Isn't Novelistic, was originally written some time ago, I believe, but I guess he updated it), a nuclear device going off in Tel Aviv is almost a certainty if both parties stick to the present course. While Israel may be able to take a lot of folks down with it if a bomb goes off, a nuclear exchange -- a Second Holocaust -- would definitely end the State of Israel permanently.

It now appears the hardliners in Israel and on FR are moving to discredit the Road Map. On TV today I saw a poster carried by an Israeli protester in Washington which read "Bush, Take your Road Map and Go to Hell." On FR also the usual posters have been extremely critical and dismissive of the President.

A few weeks ago I predicted that the President would put the hammer down hard on Sharon. FR's most strident Israel supporters either ignored me or told me I didn't know what I was talking about. To those who did challenge me I asserted that anyone who didn't believe Bush would come down hard on Sharon A) doesn't know how Bush thinks, and B) doesn't really "get" what the US has been about doing ever since 911.

President Bush is giving this conflict one last shot, folks. It is of course beyond any doubt that the situation cannot continue for another 50 years. But what some Israel supporters don't seem to get is that it can't even continue for another 5 years. The end game is here. The US cannot put its own security on the line for the State of Israel --- 7900 square miles in the desert inhabited by less than 10 million of the 6 billion people on the planet --- in a post 911 world where nuclear weapons, in a sort of dread inevitability, are proliferating. The price Israel is asking the US to pay is becoming too high. The United States is not surrounded by 250 million backward peoples steeped in hatred. Israel is. How much are Americans required to pay for this unhappy circumstance? Bush's constitutional duty requires him to answer: Not with their lives.

Something big has got to change, and that big thing is the creation of a Palestinian State.

So no matter what elaborate justifications either side comes up with for why they can't do this or why they can't do that, George Bush is not going to listen. The respective sides will do what he tells them to do, or the United States will walk away from the Levant within a spectacularly short period of time, possibly, as I say, within as little as 5 years.

[cookcounty]

Lets see:

The Israelis

1. released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including murders of children.

2. Allowed thousands of Palestinians to begin commuting to find jobs in Israel

3. began dismantling outposts in Judea and Samaria.....

Meanwhile, the Palestinians claimed "it's way too early for us to do anything," then Hamas kills Israelis, and Rantisi brags about it.........

[enuu]

But...our interest in Israel is not as some charity case. The enemies of Israel happen to also be the enemies of the United States. "Terrorist Organizations of global reach"...remember? Why don't we unite with Israel to destroy our common enemies, instead of giving the terrorists credibility by saying "most palestinians are peace-loving people." They all want to kill Jews AND Americans.