By Robert Zelnick, Spero News, 04.10.07

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The Bush administration’s ”Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict” quickly won the endorsement of the other three members of the ”Quartet”—the UN, EU, and Russia—when it was proposed to them in 2003. It envisioned concrete steps to satisfy the demands of mutual security, good governance, and economic and political cooperation, and then in three years resolution of all final status issues and a state for the Palestinians.
For many reasons, the plan couldn’t get off the ground. But now, chastened by developments in Gaza and the regional anxiety over a nuclear Iran, the Arab world is pushing a new idea: reverse the Roadmap. Move to final status negotiations immediately, while continuing to work on improving Palestinian governance, security, and transparency. After all, from the Virtual Geneva Accord to a recent exercise at Washington’s Brookings Institution, reasonable Israelis and Palestinians have shown the ability to achieve consensus on all substantial issues relating to the two-state solution, while in real life, the process has been marred with assassinations, riots, overzealous security forces, suicide bombings, random acts of terror committed by out-of-control militias, roadblocks, barricades, and walls. These have precluded meetings of substance for years at a time, when in fact a clear vision of statehood and an end to the Israeli occupation could induce a far more responsible approach on the part of the Palestinians.
Palestinians view the Roadmap as a kind of albatross around their necks. Yasser Abd Rabu was a leader of the Palestinian delegation that negotiated Virtual Geneva. When asked about the prospect of negotiations, he stated. ”There is always a reason to avoid the final status talks,” he said. ”I know of no logical reason the resumption of final status talks would harm Israeli interests, but I can give you 100 reasons why no talks harm us.” Key among them is that, as Al Ghad’s Aymn Safdi put it, for Abbas it is either a deal for a two-state solution or political oblivion. ”If Abbas goes to the polls again without an agreement, it will be over.” Ahman Abd Alrahman, a former friend of and aide to Arafat, concurred, arguing, ”The main issue is that Fatah failed in its bid for peace.” With a deal, the noted, Abbas could go to the people and demonstrate once and for all that compared to real negotiations, armed resistance leads nowhere.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboulgheit, one of the plan’s major backers, observes, ”Let’s agree on an endgame. Let’s agree on where the Roadmap is taking us. We need a plan: two states with such and such borders, some compromise on Jerusalem and on the right of return. Then we can consider in reverse how to achieve each of these.”