President Bush stood up and said there should be peace and a Palestinian state by 2005. The Israelis watered down the proposal, which in the end contained nothing specific about the settlements, nor the right of return. Palestinian fundamentalists on the other hand dismissed the road map outright.
Given the recent escalation of violence between Israel and the inhabitants in the occupied territories, as well as the failure by Israel to remove settlements and the failure by PA to restrain IJ and to some extent Hamas, should we regard the road map as dead? Or could it be brought back on track?
Like we say here... you need two to dance. In the palestinian issue you need around 4 or 5 to dance. None of the leaders including Bush was really interested in making concessions or seeking peace.
Like post war Britain threw aside Churchill... a peaceful Palestine would/might discard Arafat. Sharon has been killing muslims for almost 50 years... why would he suddenly stop ? Bush doesn't really understand or care about the issues at hand, besides solving these problems without war would make Iraq seem like a bad move. Syria and other arabs certainly wouldnt give Bush a political victory with a sucessful Road Map.
If there were any chances... Bush supporting Israel in its airstrike into Syria ended any chances.
Why would Sharon suddenly stop defending Israel? Oh, I don’t know, maybe when Arafat’s group stops sending in women and children strapped with explosives to deliberately kill Israeli civilians.
Well, breathing has stopped and I couldn’t find a distal pulse. May be alive, but not for much longer w/o major intervention. The Dr.'s checking for a DNR order.
Was it ever alive? To me it just looked like a strategem from Bush to keep Blair happy, cant say I have seen any sign that it was ever really taken seriously. As soon as I heard that Israel wanted to amend the text by deleting all references to an independent state and instead speaking merely of “some attributes of sovereignity” I mentally placed it in the trash. I am more likely to come home tonight to find Liv Tyler naked in my bedroom moaning ‘take me now big boy’, then the thugs Sharon, Arafat and Bush are likely to bring peace.
The “Road Map” is simply a continuation of the “Oslo Peace Process” of yesteryear for which those two Solons and winners of that utterly worthless Nobel Peace Prize, Peres and Arafat (urgent heart bypass OP now pending - flowers optional) received such praise from the cognoscenti and soft minded optimists (and cynics) of eight years ago.
A strategem from Bush? That’s really a stretch.
He’s administration is a latecomer to the whole Judaic-Christian-Muslim farce that has played a major influence in that region of the world for many centuries.
For anyone with any knowledge of the history of the area, the “Road Map” and the “Oslo Process” was an implausible fiction from the word go.
Originally, Bush said he didn’t want to “touch” this conflict, referring to the failed efforts of former president Clinton. Later he changed his mind, stating that the “road to peace in Palestine goes through Bagdad”. Then we had the Tenet plan and the Road Map.
Even though the road map was a joint effort between the US, the EU and Russia, along with the UN, the proposal didn’t become public policy before Bush stood up and held his “kick-off” speech.
Today it seems holding speeches is all the WH is doing. Granted, a few messengers/envoys have been dispatched to the region, apparantly reluctantly on their own part, and all of them (Powell, Zinni, Tenet(?)) have returned emptyhanded. The current envoy, John S. Wolf, is currently on “vacation”.
Do you think it’s the view of the Administration that if the parties cannot follow his (Bush’s) “vision” on their own, the road map will not succed? In other words, is the Administration not interested in working out the details and problems as they arise on a day to day basis, by putting pressure on the parties?
Could the road map succeed by putting more pressure on the parties? Does the road to peace go through Bagdad, meaning we could see progress when Iraq is stabilized?