In search of a better road map

National Review Online has two good articles about the “road map” to peace. Clifford May explains some of the road map’s shortcomings, noting that “a road map is of little value until and unless the travelers agree on the destination.” May gets off his best line when he points out how imperfectly the road map, drawn up by the EU, the UN, Russia, and U.S. State Department, comports with the vision for peace articulated by President Bush. Says May, “The road map is based on President Bush’s June 24, 2002 speech on the Middle East in the same sense that The Great Gatsby starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow was based on the book by F. Scott Fitzgerald.”
In the other NRO piece, Saul Singer of the Jerusalem Post finds it “next to impossible” to believe that President Bush thinks the “Arafat-Abbas combo will result in a real Palestinian crackdown against terror or in serious Arab-Israeli negotiations.” Accordingly, Singer wonders why Bush is “going through the motions of embracing Abbas and pushing the road map.” Singer suspects that he is doing so to because he feels he owes it to Tony Blair. But Singer argues that loyalty to Blair does not require backing an approach to peace that is bound to fail, and one concocted mostly by those who, unlike Blair, failed to support the U.S. at the time of the war that liberated Iraq. Instead, Singer urges Bush to back Israel’s requirements that, before negotiations proceed, the Palestinians renounce the demand of “return” to Israel and end their terrorist war against the Jewish state.

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