[(Continued from p.3)]
the demonization of the settlers.The Jews who have settled in Judea, Samaria and in the Gaza district are utterly and immaculately legal. They are legal in the strictest interpretation of international law, and they are legitimate by the strictest test of historical right, not to mention their civic residential rights.
Any attempt from outside to move them would be a threefold crime, first of all against the Jewish people. The end of the road map chapter should thus be: President George W. Bush breaks off the unholy liaison with his ugly bedfellows, persuades Blair to cool down the passion of British anti-Semitism, and orders Colin Powell to think afresh.
The road map itself can be left by the roadside.
(This article was published in the Jerusalem
Post of May 4, 2003. Katz's definitive two volume biography
of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Lone Wolf, is available through AFSI.)
It is not generally recognized that the Bush Plan, which, having evolved into "The Road Map," is now tightening like a noose around Sharon's neck, was based on ideas originally put forth by Sharon himself. For example, as Yediot Ahronot reported back on October 18, 2002, the three-phase plan for Palestinian statehood stipulated in the Road Map was originally Arik Sharon's. On October 15, 2002, then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres stated in an interview with Dan Margalit on Israel Television's Channel One: "The government has announced that it accepts Bush's vision of two states for two peoples" and "A third party has now joined -- the Quartet." Interviewed by Margalit the next day, Sharon affirmed that "acceptance of the Bush Plan is a strategic decision. The plan is essentially a joint Israeli-American plan."
The following are the main points of the document known as the Road Map, whose full name is A Performance-Based Road Map to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
As is evident from the Road Map's title and text, the key objective is establishment of an independent and viable Palestinian state with sovereignty and a maximum extent of geographical continuity. The Road Map makes no mention of Sharon's conditions, e.g. that this state be demilitarized, that it not be granted authority to control borders or airspace or contract international agreements, etc.
The Palestinian State will be established in two phases:
A. A Palestinian state with temporary borders "following general elections in 2003."
Note that the Quartet will look to possible membership in the United Nations as early as 2003. Consider the irrevocable implications: an internationally recognized sovereign Palestinian state is to be established within a few months.
B. "A final, permanent status resolution in 2005, including on borders, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements."
This of course disregards the Israeli Prime Minister's well-known stipulation that the process extend over at least ten years.
A. Two International Conferences
The First International Conference will convene in 2003 after projected Palestinian elections to "launch a process that leads to the establishment of a Palestinian state with temporary borders."
The Second International Conference will convene in 2004 "to endorse agreement reached on an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and formally to launch a process with the active, sustained and operational support of the Quartet, leading to a final permanent status resolution in 2005."
All Governments of Israel, right-wing and left-wing alike, have avoided international conferences like the plague. The reasons, so obvious that even a child could understand them, remain unchanged. In fact, the situation may well have worsened, considering the intensified international support expressed for the Arabs, along with growing overt hostility towards Israel and Jews as a whole within the countries represented at such a conference.
B. The Quartet
The Quartet is the chief instrument applied to wrest freedom of sovereign behavior from Israel and grant it to the Palestinians. The following are a few of its functions and authorities:
1. Convening International Conferences. While the Road Map says the Quartet "may consult" with the parties involved, International Conferences will in fact be forced on Israel against its will.
2. Deciding, "based on the collective ruling of the Quartet Committee whether the conditions are appropriate for progress, taking into consideration the performance of all parties."
[(Continued on p.5)]
Outpost - 4 - June 2003