Thursday, August 21, 2003

The Roadmap Takes a Very Wrong Turn

Who could have predicted this?

The Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have called off their ceasefire after an Israeli missile strike killed a Hamas leader in Gaza City. This after a Palestine suicide bomber killed scores of Israelis (and others) in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the attack did not mean the end of the roadmap, but doesn’t it? With neither side willing to truly compromise, the Roadmap to Peace(?) really never had a chance to succeed, and now it is just another in a long line of failed proposals. And the Bush Administration seems ambivalent, at best, to the entire situation, unwilling or unable to make the really hard decisions that would move the process forward and put an end, once and for all, to the bloodshed. Action on the part of the U.S. needs to go beyond mere rhetoric to a solid plan of action that draws the surrounding countries into roadmap.

Syria for instance must be persuaded, or pressured, into ending its support of the militant Islamic factions now at work in The West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Lebanon. And Lebanon must be persuaded to finally crack down on Hezbollah and expel them from the country. Peace, I submit, cannot move forward without an end to the bloodshed fostered by militant Islamic groups who claim to have to best interests of the Palestinian people at heart. Failure of leadership from the Bush Administration? I say yes, what say you?

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