The United States is again offering Israel a road map to peace in the Middle East, but is a road map with roads that lead nowhere truly a road map? President Obama met with Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu some weeks ago, trying to convince Bibi to accept the two state solution laid out in the left wing Israel Policy Forum road map for Middle East peace, but the Prime Minister insisted that for Israel to accept the US must guarantee the peace if Hamas takes over the West Bank, which guarantee President Obama was reluctant to give. The road map has no Interstates, only blue highways, twisting and turning, leading down dead ends, heading nowhere in particular.

 

There is a history here. President George W. Bush offered a similar road map in 2002, but the process goes back further than that, to President Carter and the Camp David Accords, to Oslo, and on to the present day. All these attempts at mediation called for a two state solution, a Palestinian state on the West Bank, and Israel in its pre-1967 borders. The Israelis were and are agreeable to a two state solution, but only if they can be guaranteed the Palestinian state would be a peaceful one. The Palestinians, for their part, have always rejected the two state solution, pushing instead for a one Palestinian state solution, with Israel destroyed and all the Jews dead. A sensible observer might conclude the Palestinian attitude makes any settlement unlikely, but not so the diplomats. To the diplomats, peace is not the end, the process is the end. The end, however, will come with Israeli bombs, for the peace of the world does not hinge on the Israeli-Palestinian question, as the left believes, but on the Israeli-Iranian question, where the only relevant questions are, How soon after Iran has nuclear weapons will Israel be destroyed, and How long can Israel wait before attacking Iran.    

 

 

A road map can mean many things

To some a way to go

To others though the term just sings

Of peace with one’s dear foe

To those of messianic view

The road map shines so bright

That they cannot conceive of who

Could think the thing not right

Two states is surely what the world

Would like to come about

The Palestinian flag unfurled

In Israel and without

But Bibi knows Obama knows

That if he does agree

The danger from Hamas still grows

Despite Obama’s plea

That both sides come to friendly terms

Ensuring O’s repute

Until the maggots and the worms

Settle all dispute