The Roadmap to Peace
The Roadmap to Peace was drafted by ‘the Quartet’ (the US, the UN, Russia and the EU) in the summer of 2002 but was not officially announced until April 2003. It resembled the Oslo process in envisaging transitional arrangements and negotiations leading to a permanent-status agreement by a set date. However, the Roadmap added two additional elements. First, it was to be ‘performance-based’, with Israelis and Palestinians simultaneously taking specified steps to restore mutual confidence. Second, it outlined the ultimate destination of a two-state solution – although the Roadmap did not contain any guarantee that that destination would be reached; nor did it say who was responsible for ensuring the process’s success.
The structure and content of the Roadmap mattered much less, though, than the way in which it was handled by the US administration. With President Bush preoccupied by Afghanistan and Iraq, the Roadmap was not a high priority for him. Moreover, when Sharon sought to eviscerate the Roadmap by stripping it of substance, Bush allowed him to do so. The other three members of the Quartet made no protest. This, combined with continued violence, rendered the Roadmap a dead letter. In terms of lessons, there is one here for international sponsors of Israeli–Palestinian peacemaking, namely that they should defend the core elements of any proposals they put forward, or risk seeing them collapse.