Word: roadmaps
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...veteran who had spent most of his political career by Arafat's side, who still reports back to Arafat despite the U.S.-Israeli boycott of the Palestinian Authority president. The President may also have been somewhat frustrated to discover, in his meeting Tuesday with Arab leaders who back the "roadmap," that Arafat remains the leader of the Palestinians - the U.S. had hoped to persuade the meeting to issue a ringing endorsement of Abbas that would effectively crown him as the man in charge of Palestinian affairs, but the meeting instead undertook simply to "support the determination of the Palestinian Authority...
...Abbas is politically weak, however, and to succeed even in meeting the security requirements of the first phase of the "roadmap," he will depend on coaxing a cease-fire agreement out of the Palestinian radical groups waging the armed intifada. The combination of persuasion and enforcement necessary to halt terrorism will almost certainly require the support of Yasser Arafat, who remains more powerful than Abbas both inside the Palestinian Authority and on the street...
...That points to a divide possibly even more profound than the standoff over security. The endpoint of the roadmap is a Palestinian state at peace with Israel. But the document provides no outline of the borders. For the Palestinians, a final peace agreement is based on the last one offered by Ehud Barak at the Taba talks in January 2001 - a Palestinian state in all, or almost all of the West Bank and Gaza, with its capital in East Jerusalem. Although Sharon has never put all his cards on the table, he's given plenty of indicators that...
...Bush's Middle East policy coordinator Elliot Abrams has made no secret of his opposition, favoring a far more limited territorial concession by Israel. The outcome of the internal battles in the Bush administration may yet prove decisive in determining the prospects for getting to the end of the "roadmap." That is, of course, if the journey is actually begun...
...much as the administration may be hoping that next week's summit provides the spur that gets Israelis and Palestinians to work on resolving their problems bilaterally, every indication thus far is that every inch of progress along the "roadmap" will require considerable prodding from Washington. And making himself indispensable to a long-shot Middle East peace process on the eve of a U.S. presidential election season may carry considerable political and diplomatic risk for the White House...