Road map rubble

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In a recent column, the wise and often erudite essayist William F. Buckley discussed the Israeli-Palestinian crisis on which he pronounced this verdict: "Mr. Bush's road map has evolved as a great fiasco." But I sought in vain an answer to an obvious question:

Why has this road map and all other past "road maps" evolved as great fiascoes?

From Richard Nixon to Gerald Ford, to Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George Bush, father and son, there have been fiascoes galore. Lots of warm handshakes on the White House lawn, broad, triumphant smiles on all sides. Camp David agreements, the 1993 Oslo accords, all great TV ops for American presidents, Israeli prime ministers and the omnipresent, long-lived Yasser Arafat, a Selig with bombs, wearing his black-and-white kaffiyah and the biggest grin of all

And promises, promises, pledges, guarantees, billions and billions of U.S. dollars. Hamas and Hezbollah and their subsystems go right on with their suicide bombers, surviving Israeli counterattacks and so-called assassinations. Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas arrives on the scene and 100 days later he is an ex-prime minister.

What happened to those hopeful words uttered by President Bush after his meeting July 25 with Prime Minister Abbas? "We had a good meeting today about the way forward on the road map to Middle Eastern peace. Prime Minister Abbas and I share a common goal: peace in the Holy Land between two free and secure states, Palestine and Israel ...

"Prime Minister Abbas committed to a complete end to violence and terrorism, and he recognized that terror against Israelis, wherever they might be, is a dangerous obstacle to the achievement of a Palestinian state."

What Mr. Buckley doesn't seem to understand is that no matter what Israel gives or pledges to give, there will be no peace now or in the foreseeable future because neither Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt or, most visibly, Osama bin Laden will permit Israel, a democratic, modern state to exist. In other words, "peace negotiations" are not about giving up the Settlements or some other fictitious issue. They are about Israel's existence.

Does Mr. Buckley think Israel is against peace and the Arabs are for peace? Gulf war III now under way in Iraq is an Arab war to prevent another democracy from being created in the Middle East, and worst of all a Muslim democracy.

This half-century war, nominally in the cause of a Palestinian state, has poisoned the political atmosphere in this country so we have a new and respectable kind of anti-Semitism using code words like "neo-cons," "Likudniks," or "ex-Trotskyites" as part of the vocabulary.