Kadima supporters and the road map

By Akiva Eldar

Ariel Sharon has a good chance of going down in history as the first leader who owes his election to voters who do not believe him. At the press conference at which he announced his departure from the Likud, Sharon promised "continued implementation of the road map." For the benefit of Kadima supporters who do not remember what this battered American map, which has become the new party's platform, actually says, following are some quotes from the document: "Parties reach final and comprehensive settlement status agreement that ends the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2005, through a settlement negotiated between the parties."

It also talks about "a negotiated resolution on the status of Jerusalem that takes into account the political and religious concerns of both sides," about the refugees, about a sovereign and viable Palestinian state, and about peace talks with Syria and Lebanon - all on the basis of UN Resolutions 242 and 338, the Saudi initiative and the Arab League's decision.

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The longing for Sharon to consolidate most of the settlers into settlement blocks throughout the West Bank while throwing the Palestinians behind a fence blurs the enormous differences between the two territories. In Gaza, Israel withdrew to an agreed border (more or less, with the exception of a few hundred meters north of the Strip), and not a single settlement remains there. Gaza's area is seven times smaller than that of the West Bank, and its population density is record-breaking. Gaza is not the Palestinian capital and has no holy sites dear to the hearts of both warring peoples. Gaza has no vital water sources and it does not border on a weak Arab state surrounded by enemies.

It has been a little over five years since Ehud Barak's abortive attempt to dictate the future borders of their state and a deal over Jerusalem's holy sites to the Palestinians. The gap between Barak's dictates and Yasser Arafat's territorial and other expectations was too large. Sharon has reason to believe that the map that would placed on any negotiating table would be similar, if not identical, to that proposed by Bill Clinton: The Palestinians would receive 94 to 96 percent of the West Bank plus compensation for the rest in a ratio of almost 1:1. In negotiations, he would have to forget the E-1 plan, whose goal is to complete the strangulation of East Jerusalem, and erase Ariel and the Jordan Valley from the list of settlement blocs.

Sharon does not intend to repeat Barak's drill. He will not be caught leaning over maps at Camp David between George Bush and Mahmoud Abbas. He is dictating his Bantustan plan on the ground through fences and walls, through evacuating two outposts and expanding a dozen settlements. The last dictate ended with 1,000 Israelis and more than 3,000 Palestinians dead.

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Is laughable, since Ariel Sharon is publically on record as saying he "doesn't like the Roadmap" and thinks the dates within it are "not serious".

Eldar's representaion of the Roadmap is also slewed and incorrect in places, but that's par for the course. Eldar is a great reporter and surely knows that the Roadmap was long ago declared irrelevant by the US and Israel in private discussion, whatever they say in public. This is just an attempt to bash Sharon by comparing his ideas to the Roadmap. Obviously they are in conflict - but then the whole enterprise is a joke, so that's not exactly news.

and never really was...what it was a piece of paper with some black marks on it, that totally ignored realities on the ground....it was a piece of political blah blah.

the final borders will be determined by the actions on the ground and when the palestenain leaders and israelis get together and make some local decisions, either together or unilaterally, once accepted.....those local borders (as in gaza) when they work out will then expand to be "larger" borders and that inturn will become the ad hoc border....

such are the realities over here....but it will take a bit more suffering unfortunatly.