Without cover
By
Salama A Salama
The roadmap essentially comprised the broad outlines of a series of steps founded on a process of mutual confidence building. There was an assumption that progress towards achieving the goals the roadmap had set itself would be made under the supervision of an American administration capable of ensuring that the parties implemented the things they had agreed.
As many anticipated the roadmap collapsed, a result of American bias towards Israeli objectives combined with the absence of international monitoring on the ground. Compounding the inevitability of failure was Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's blanket refusal to accept even the possibility of peaceful coexistence with Palestinians and the ever diminishing European role, and the differences that broke out between the Palestinians.
The circumstances surrounding the rise and fall of Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian prime minister are well-known: his appointment as prime minister came about in response to American and Israeli pressure intended to isolate Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. In response to Arab and Palestinian efforts to broker a ceasefire Abbas was granted a symbolic meeting with US President George W Bush at the White House and a small number of Palestinians detained by Israel were released. Meanwhile, Israel pressed ahead with its apartheid wall, undertook more assassination operations, constructed 13 new settlements and continued its occupation of most of the Gaza Strip and West Bank territories. The US then placed Abbas in an impossible position by making its support conditional on the dismantling of Palestinian factions.
The quarrel between Abbas and Arafat was not only a dispute over control of the Palestinian security apparatus. The conflict was between two visions: one posits that halting all resistance operations will convince the US to interfere on behalf of the Palestinians and adopt a more balanced approach towards Israel; the other has no faith in Israel honouring its commitments, or the US pressuring it to do so.
Events have shown that to trust American promises regarding the Arab Palestinian conflict is foolhardy: how can one trust an administration that insists on isolating Arafat, elected in a democratic process by his people, and which is silent about the state terrorism daily practiced by Israel yet rushes to condemn any action by the resistance.
The US undermined Abbas's legitimacy by attempting to force him to dismantle the Palestinian factions. Groups such as Hamas and Jihad are part of the fabric of Palestinian society and no Palestinian authority -- whether Abbas or Arafat -- will be capable of dismantling them in the absence of a true and just peace.
While Washington's motives in following a course of action that placed no curbs on Sharon, but which meanwhile caused the Abbas administration to implode, are pretty clear, the position of the EU is far less understandable.
In recent months the EU has failed to issue a single condemnation of Israel though it issued a statement adding the political wing of Hamas to its list of terrorist groups. Hardly a bolt out of the blue; ever since Italy became president of the EU it was going to happen, at one time or another.
Washington's rhetorical, albeit biased, support for the roadmap and Europe's blessing of it from a distance could never have been a viable alternative to an international mechanism that forces Israel to honour its commitments. Unless there is a neutral international force to monitor the situation, and assess the responsibilitie s of each side, there can be no peace.
