A Road to Peace That's Paved With the Worst Intentions

The question of whether or not the road map for peace between Israelis and Palestinians will allow the two peoples to reach that destination is best investigated by asking another question. Can the cheaters be cheated? Or, to put it more moderately, can the cheaters be made to change?

For the road map has been "accepted" by leaders who intend to subvert it, bend it to their purposes, turn it inside out and rewrite it as they go along. It has been proposed by outside powers whose real aims are far from clear, particularly in the case of the US, and the degree of whose resolve must be doubted.

Rarely can so much bad faith have been invested in a single document. And yet it could nevertheless change the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians and help release the pent-up forces in favour of a fair settlement in both communities.

Foremost among the cheaters is Ariel Sharon. No one seriously contends that the Israeli prime minister wants a Palestinian state worthy of the name to come into existence. Such a state, possessing all or nearly all of the pre-1967 lands and in full control of its own affairs and resources, is undoubtedly the destination pointed to on the third sheet of the road map.

Sharon is instead almost certainly intent on halting on the second sheet, which covers the establishment of an interim state in parts of the West Bank and Gaza. This supposedly temporary stop would suit Sharon very well as a final destination, even if a desultory negotiation might have to continue for appearance's sake. The Palestinians would have a sort of state, but it would in reality consist of a collection of weak, dependent communities that would be neither a problem for, nor a threat to, Israel.

Meanwhile, the man who almost invented facts on the ground will go on trying to create them. He will try to do so by thickening settlements rather than establishing new ones, which he recognises is no longer possible, and by reaching out with his new wall to loop around the main settlement blocks he intends to keep, come what may, within the territory Israel will directly control.

But this preliminary cheating has already run into some obstacles. The Israeli prime minister's trip to Washington at the end of last month was not the complete success that the Israelis claimed it to be. The Americans did not accept that the building of new houses within the boundaries of existing settlements was exempt from the freeze on settlement activity, as has been shown by the recent state department response to building plans in Gaza. They indicated that an extension of the Israeli security wall deep into Palestinian land to cover a substantial block of settlements would be unacceptable.

They even mentioned that peculiar but important weapon in the American armoury, the loan guarantee. Through these guarantees, America backs Israel's credit which, given the battered state of the Israeli economy, would not otherwise allow it to raise the money it needs at reasonable rates. The current loan guarantee is already subject to deduction, in principle, if there is spending on settlement expansion. Now the suggestion is that spending on the security wall might also be deductible.

This is no more than skirmishing at the moment, but it is symbolically important skirmishing, because America's forceful use of the threat to withdraw loan guarantees was what forced a rightwing Israeli government into peace negotiations in Madrid at the beginning of the 1990s. Two task forces, one on settlements and one on the wall, are now to be formed, not the most desirable outcome for Sharon, even if he will have American sympathisers and friends working to influence their proceedings.

Perhaps more worrying for Sharon is what could be the beginning of an American understanding that the ceasefire to which Hamas and Islamic Jihad have agreed cannot be seen as a mere prelude to their later destruction, along with that of militant groups of Fatah origin, once the new Palestinian administration has become stronger.

This, of course, is the Sharon government's line, and indeed it is what the road map lays down. But, in fact, the first phase of the road map on the Palestinian side has been characterised by a bargain between prime minister Abu Mazen and the radical groups, a bargain struck with the intention of influencing the debate within those groups between their more and their less extreme wings.

This bargain, too, is cheating in a way, but cheating with far more constructive possibilities than that on Sharon's side. As the Palestinian commentator Daoud Kuttab said in a recent article: "The real goal should be the successful integration of these hard-line groups into a pragmatic political process so they can participate in decision making - with all the responsibilities which this entails."

Yet such an outcome would inevitably preserve the political strength and to some extent the military capacity of these groups. Undoubtedly there are those in the radical groups who might plan to ride the road map to a certain point and then use that capacity to wreck progress toward peace, perhaps after an argument over best and second best reminiscent of Ireland in 1921.

They might also use it, a very different thing, to fight against an unjust peace, for instance any final offer that fell dramatically short of what was discussed at Taba. That would make more difficult the objective of rendering Palestinian society incapable of resistance or retaliation, an objective that many believe is essentially what Sharon has in mind.

It is against this background that the tussle between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority over prisoner releases should be seen. It is a reasonable speculation that getting a large number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad men out of jail was part of the bargaining between Abu Mazen and those organisations.

In balking at these Palestinian demands for releases which are, it is true, not laid down by the road map, the Sharon government is not only responding to supporters who do not see why killers and their helpers should be set free, or keeping some human currency for later use. It is also resisting the unlooked-for consequence of the working out of the road map, which is that it has so far brought Palestinian organisations together rather than setting them at each other's throats.

So the road map so far has brought some surprises and there are, in other words, some shreds of hope. It is a hope reinforced when a recent poll by Peace Now shows that 70% of settlers would leave if given compensation, while a study just completed by the Palestinian political scientist Khalil Shikaki suggests that the vast majority of Palestinian refugees would not want to return to what is now Israel. These are just the latest pieces of evidence that these problems are not insoluble and that peace is available. If the cheaters can be cheated.