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Who Killed Annapolis?

[Jerusalem Post] Editorial - As Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman stated, Annapolis is dead - and everyone knows it. Annapolis has become just another footnote in the 100-year history of Palestinian rejectionism. It died when Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Qurei rejected Ehud Olmert's and Tzipi Livni's offer last year of virtually the entire West Bank (the Palestinians already have Gaza), plus tracts of the Negev to make up for strategic settlement blocs retained beyond the "green line." Had the Palestinians taken this astonishingly magnanimous deal, "Palestine" would have become the 22nd Muslim Arab state in the Middle East. Lieberman pledged a total commitment to what is officially known as a "Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israel-Palestinian Conflict." The Annapolis process was a stab at leapfrogging over the Roadmap because the Palestinians could not - or would not - fulfill their obligation to end the violence. And the international community preferred the illusion of momentum Annapolis provided. The alternative would have been to concede that even "moderate" Palestinians are not prepared to follow through on the hard work necessary to achieve a two-state solution. The Roadmap stipulates: "A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be achieved through an end to violence and terrorism, when the Palestinian people have a leadership acting decisively against terror and are willing and able to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty, and through Israel's readiness to do what is necessary for a democratic Palestinian state to be established." What could be clearer? Israel buried another victim of Palestinian terror, 16-year-old Shlomo Nativ, who was hacked to death on Thursday in Bat Ayin, southwest of Jerusalem. It is this kind of Palestinian brutality - combined with diplomatic obduracy - that keeps the Roadmap grounded.
2009-04-03 06:00:00
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