Word: roadmap
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...emerging in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority as a first step toward a comprehensive peace deal based on the 1967 borders. Sharon, however, developed his own version that cut the Palestinians out the equation altogether, and envisaged the Gaza withdrawal as an alternative to proceeding with the U.S.-backed "roadmap" toward a comprehensive settlement. Sharon has insisted that the Palestinian Authority, led by Yasser Arafat, is not an acceptable interlocutor, and therefore that there is no Palestinian partner with whom Israel can negotiate agreements - a position to which has been partially endorsed by the Bush administration...
...Sharon's plan was adopted by Israel and the U.S. outside of any of the established negotiating mechanisms or processes from the Oslo Accord to the U.S.-backed "Roadmap," with no involvement from the Palestinian side. The Bush administration sought to spin it as a first step toward implementing the "Roadmap," which could turn out to be true but could just as easily be wishful thinking, because nothing in the plan requires or even references any of the steps envisaged in the roadmap. Indeed, while the U.S. was painting the plan as a bold first step, Sharon was telling Israelis...
Ashrawi also expressed her opposition to Bush administration policies in the region, ranging from its roadmap plan to what she called “a mutual admiration society between Bush and Sharon.” She cited a “knowledge and foresight deficit” in U.S. foreign policy, and said “the United States has become an overt partner in Israel’s occupation of Palestine...
...acknowledging the accord’s overall fairness and the inevitability of tough compromises like those it details, Bush could restart the peace process and restore his credibility as an honest broker, lost as it was with his reluctance to enforce the Roadmap. Israeli and Palestinian moderates might agitate for a cease-fire and a settlement freeze—required in the Roadmap’s first phrase—if Bush offers them details about the kind of two-state solution they stand to lose. Like Oslo before it, the Roadmap failed in part because it left the questions...
...Bush insists on following the Roadmap, he should incorporate the Geneva Accord as a starting point for eventual negotiations. In the long-term, Roadmap or not, options like the Geneva Accord will accelerate agreement once both sides sit down at the table. Bush should also offer financial and diplomatic support to those Israelis and Palestinians, inside and outside of government, who want to develop alternative diplomatic solutions. To dampen the political costs of defying Sharon, Bush could support Sharon’s decision not to negotiate outside of a cease-fire while insisting that extra-governmental dialogue, with U.S. backing...