Word: roadmap
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Although he greeted it with skepticism, President Bush's Mideast peace "roadmap" got its most important boost yet on Wednesday - in the form of a reported agreement by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade to halt attacks on Israelis for three months. In response, the President declared, "I'll believe it when I see it," and echoed the Israeli demand that progress depends on the dismantling of the groups that had reportedly embraced a cease-fire. But Palestinian Authority prime minister Mahmoud Abbas, on whom the Bush administration is relying to deliver Palestinian compliance with...
...been waiting for Hamas to deliver its verdict on the cease-fire proposed by Abbas underscores the growing role of the Islamist movement in Palestinian political life. While Secretary of State Colin Powell dismisses Hamas as "a handful of individuals" who must not be allowed to "blow up the roadmap," the reality is plainly more complex. Hamas is believed by Israeli security services to have fewer than 1,000 men under arms in Gaza, compared with some 50,000 on the payroll of the PA security forces. But those numbers don't explain, for example, why Abbas repeatedly and strenuously...
...among the Israeli public. They know Sharon will offer something way short of the draft agreement that had been on the table at Taba, but they also believe that Palestinian suicide bombers have terrorized the Israeli electorate into electing and reelecting the aging hawk. By setting out along the roadmap, and getting at least as far as a working cease-fire, they hope they can persuade the Israeli electorate to once again elect a Labor Party leader more willing than Sharon to cede all or most of the West Bank and Gaza...
...same time, Sharon is keenly aware of the strongly pro-Likud sentiment of the hawkish faction of the Bush administration, which together with the overwhelming support on Capitol Hill for his own policies has given him the freedom to cherry-pick U.S. positions. Even his embrace of the roadmap has been partial and conditional, and he claims to have achieved understandings with Washington that issues such as the settlement freeze - which Sharon finds politically difficult as one of the founding fathers of the movement to settle Israeli civilians on lands occupied in 1967 but never annexed - will be dealt with...
...After two weeks of the roadmap process, there's a tacit acknowledgment of the limits of Abbas's own authority. Yasser Arafat plainly remains in charge of the PA, and his endorsement remains essential if Abbas is to have even a remote chance of delivering on the security requirements of the "roadmap." Tuesday's reports that Israel is considering freeing Marwan Barghouti - the West Bank Fatah leader accused by Israel of running the movement's militias and terror groups - is a further indicator that those orchestrating the roadmap process are aware that the only workable cease-fire is one endorsed...