David Parsons, October 23, 2002

With US envoy William Burns due in Jerusalem on Wednesday evening, Israeli media is reporting that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has "blasted" the Madrid Quartet’s latest "roadmap" to a permanent Israeli-Palestinian peace accord delivered by the Bush Administration during Sharon’s visit to Washington last week.

The plan -- hammered out by the Quartet of the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia -- is crucial to Washington’s efforts to gain Arab backing for a looming military campaign on Baghdad. Ambassador Burns is touring the region to gauge reactions to the plan, which plots a three-staged course that -- on paper -- would give rise to a temporary Palestinian state at an international peace conference next year and end with a full-fledged state living peacefully alongside Israel by 2005.

Sharon has previously indicated that he has come to terms with the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, but has always insisted on a gradual series of interim steps to first test Palestinian intentions.

Apparently, the new plan has not set well with Sharon. In a speech on Tuesday to a visiting B’nai B’rith delegation, Sharon referred to the road map as "problematic," adding that it unfairly requires Israel to take "irreversible steps," while the Palestinian Authority only makes "statements."

In the first phase, the plan calls for Israeli forces to withdraw to pre-intifada lines, dismantle illegal outposts, and cease military incursions into PA-ruled areas. The Palestinians are required to name a prime minister to take over daily duties from PA chairman Yasser Arafat, reform the PA security apparatus, and to reinstate security cooperation with Israel. But they are only required to start curbing violence and terror after Palestinian elections are held, now tentatively slated for January.

Concerned that Palestinian terrorists could easily exploit the resulting security vacuum, especially if things heat up quickly in Iraq, Sharon reportedly is rejecting this new scenario as a drastic departure from the formula laid out by US President George W. Bush in his landmark speech on June 24. In that major policy statement on the Middle East, Bush gave first priority to restoring Israel’s security and the emergence of a new Palestinian leadership untainted by terror and corruption.

The Israeli administration fears being railroaded into a timetable that only it is required to keep and is adamant that the plan should not deviate from the agreed outline of President Bush’s June 24 address.

"We have to stick to what was agreed in Washington regarding the Bush plan," insisted Sharon. "It is of utmost importance that any progress to each stage be conditioned to the implementation of the previous stage."

"All progress has to be conditioned to determined action against terror and incitement. If that doesn’t happen, it will be impossible to move toward a demilitarized state without final borders," concluded Sharon.

Sharon has particular concerns about the plan’s call for inserting Quartet supervisors in Palestinian areas to assess when its various stages have been completed. The Sharon government only wants American supervisors to judge whether the PA has met its obligations, but even that is worrisome to many Israelis.

The US State Department has a long and unenviable record of giving passing grades to the PA and PLO on compliance with the Oslo accords out of political considerations, knowing that a failing grade could throw a huge wrench in the "peace process." But even the primary State Department officials who oversaw the Oslo process -- Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk -- now admit that the main reason it failed was the American (and at times Israeli) practice of turning a blind eye to PLO violations of Oslo. This would include Arafat’s refusal to disarm terror militias and combat terrorism at its roots, the official PA incitement to violence against Israel, and other major areas of non-compliance.

In 1996, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu emphasized a new approach to PLO compliance grounded in "reciprocity" -- if Arafat honors the agreements, Israel will honor them. But in the Wye Agreement, the CIA was given the role of monitoring PLO compliance on security issues and that eventually proved unworkable as well.

Sharon’s balking at the new American roadmap comes as a surprise to some, since Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres met with him over the weekend and then ventured to Europe, where he told EU officials this week that the Israeli government "formally" accepts the new Quartet outline for peace.

Apparently, Peres spoke out of turn. The six-page plan was handed to Sharon’s close aide Dov Weiglass last week by US national security adviser Condi Rice. Sharon confided to New York Times columnist William Safire by telephone over the weekend that he had not studied it yet. Only in recent days have he and his closest advisors pored over the roadmap and now see events leading in a familiar and perilous direction.

With the Bush Administration taking serious aim at Iraq, Jerusalem is gearing up for what could prove to be a much deadlier reprise of the 1991 Gulf War. Israel hopes to have as many fire walls as possible in place by early November to face down a mounting array of threats that go far beyond the 39 Scud missiles launched its way back then.

But just as in 1991, there already are signs of American pressure on Israel to show restraint to any provocations, as seen in the tepid response to the Wazzani water dispute with Hizb’Allah along the Lebanese border and the latest suicide bus bombing near Hadera that left 14 Israelis dead.

And last but not least, there is an uneasy sense that a thornier repeat the post-Gulf War era of the Madrid peace conference is also waiting just around the bend, when an earlier Bush Administration leaned heavily on Israel to make concessions in order to patch up US relations with the Arabs.

The American "road map" to just such an international peace conference in 2003 has already been handed to Sharon. For Israel, the looming conflict with Baghdad may mean a serious threat is neutralized, but the political fallout could be forced acceptance of a Palestinian state.

David Parsons is the Editor of International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) News.