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U.S.-EU Crisis is Death Blow to "Road Map"
(Ha'aretz) - Ze'ev Schiff The crisis between the U.S. and Europe will have profound implications for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, undermining the Quartet's effort to impose a solution to the conflict on Israel, and strengthening the Sharon government's opposition to the Quartet "road map" and the prime minister's view that the "Bush framework" is the only relevant diplomatic arena for a political peace process. For Israel, the crisis over Iraq is proof that European and European Union thinking is tendentious, based on irrelevant considerations that can complicate problems rather than solve them. It will now be much easier for Israel to persuade Washington that European representatives cannot be given overdue influence, if they are given any influence at all, in solving the Middle East conflict. It will also strengthen those who argue that any proposal that would send European forces to the conflict as monitors or peacekeeping troops, must be rejected outright. Israeli officials note that Europe has not managed to solve a dispute between Spain and Morocco over the uninhabited Parsley Island off Gibraltar, and needed to bring in Washington to find a diplomatic solution, which it did. They point out Europe couldn't solve the Kosovo crisis without the Americans. If Europe was so helpless in a conflict on its own continent, ask Israeli officials, why should we agree to their involvement in our conflict? The Sharon government now speaks about its readiness to accept the principles named by President Bush in his June 24, 2002 speech on the Middle East - but Jerusalem wants to explain to the White House and State Department that Bush should not sign onto the road map with Europeans who are obstructing Washington's plans for Iraq.