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road map 2 nowhere
The “Made in the USA” Road Map for “settling the Israeli-Palestinian dispute” was finally published on April 30, a week after the acceptance of the Abu Mazen government of the Palestinian Authority. It involved no surprises.
The first phase, to be completed in May, calls for the Palestinian Authority to suppress “terrorism” and “collaborate” with the Israeli army. The Palestinians are also required to “reform” their institutions in accordance with U.S. demands. In return for this, the Israelis are suppose to reduce their pressure on the daily lives of the Palestinians, dismantle all Zionist settlements in the West Bank and Gaza built after 2001, and freeze the expansion of any new settlements.
The second phase, scheduled to end in December of this year, calls for setting up a Palestinian state within provisional borders, along with consolidating the “security” arrangements and “reforms” set up in the previous phase.
The third phase, which is suppose to be achieved by 2005, calls for the settlement by negotiations of all major issues, the fate of Palestinian refugees, the definite borders of the Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem, and the question of Zionist settlements on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.
Not surprisingly either, the major protests so far have come from the Israeli government rather than the shortchanged and chastised Palestinian Authority. The Israelis are demanding the Palestinians give up the right of return for Palestinian refugees from the start, as a condition for any further negotiations.
If the Palestinian Authority accepts the Israeli demand, it will be another capitulation in principle. The American design, leaving the settlement of this question to the third phase, implies that any refugees who return will return only to the territory of the Palestinian state, not to their former homes in the territory now incorporated into the state of Israel.
Moreover, the Road Map offers no promises about the size of the Palestinian state, when the Arab lands on the West Bank and in Gaza have been steadily whittled away by both Zionist settlement and the recent building of a security fence between Israeli and the Palestinian territories conquered in 1967.
The experience of the failed Oslo agreements already shows that the Israelis are determined to limit any Palestinian government to the level of the American Indian reservations, hardly even of the Bantustans of the apartheid regime of South Africa.
Some demoralized or corrupt Palestinian leaders are prepared to pay a high price even for this. But even now, after the Arab defeat in Iraq, it is doubtful whether they can get sufficient acquiescence from the Palestinian people to make the deal with the U.S. and Israel that they seem prepared to accept.
The article above was written by Gerry Foley, and first appeared in the May 2003 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.
