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Is the Road Map's Moment Gone?

(Washington Post) Jim Hoagland - * The U.S., its European and Arab allies, and the UN have labored for four months to turn Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza into a catalyst for the creation of an independent, viable Palestinian state. They are visibly failing. * Law and order have disappeared in the Gaza territory since the Israeli withdrawal. Kidnappings and gunfights, not campaign rallies, are the tools of electioneering there. Financial mismanagement by Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority has forced the World Bank to freeze $60 million in budget support and effectively move the PA toward bankruptcy in a matter of weeks. * Forcing Egyptian police officers and EU observers to flee their posts for safety hardly suggests political maturity. Neither does the decision by the PA to raise salaries and break its commitment to live within the large aid flows that international donors provide. * Instead of moving to transform themselves into the nucleus of one of the Arab world's first true democracies - as Bush, Sharon, and their road-map partners pretended the Palestinians quickly could - Gaza gunmen who recently were receiving financial rewards for attacking Israelis are now "unemployed" and threaten their neighbors and the PA.
2006-01-09 00:00:00
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