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Anne Bayefsky is an international lawyer and professor of political science at York University and a visiting professor of law at Columbia Law School. She is a member of the governing board of the Geneva-based UN Watch and author of .
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By Anne Bayefsky
June 12, 2003
Originally published in the New York Sun.
Only three months after the U.N. Security Council told President Bush to take his deck of cards and get out, it is hard to believe that the president now appears as Secretary-General Annan's lackey in the Middle East.
In America, for popular consumption, the road map" is usually called the "U.S. road map," but its authorship is not American. It is a Quartet road map, America being only one of four members along with the United Nations, the European Union, and Russia. In essence, the road map was substantially written by U.N. players and the European Union between April 2002 - the time of the U.N.-led Jenin deceit - and the fall. American negotiators preoccupied with Iraq made further amendments in late 2002, but the guts of the road map have never changed and are not consistent with the president's June 24, 2002, address.
The road map fundamentally alters the Middle East peace process, and in so doing, drives a stake in the heart of the war against terrorism.
The first seismic shift is from a negotiated settlement to imposed solutions.
Remember that as recently as November 19, 2001, Secretary of State Powell stated: "Palestinians must accept that they can only achieve their goals through negotiation. That was the essence of the agreements in Oslo in 1993. There is no other way but direct negotiation in an atmosphere of stability and non-violence."
By contrast, the road map puts negotiated outcomes at the end of the road - calling only in the second to last paragraph of the last phase, for "a settlement negotiated between the parties."
Before such negotiations the road map calls for an "international conference convened by the Quartet in consultation with the parties." Israelis can be dragged to a conference where the demographics, like those in the United Nations, are totally lopsided. America is also not immune to the pressures of an international conference - even assuming the State Department is not siding with the majority.
Imposed solution number one, before any serious trading begins, is the achievement of the primary Palestinian goal. The road map sets out the "creation of an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders" by December 2003 - not 2005 as is constantly misreported. The word "provisional" never appears before the word "state." Full statehood does not require fully defined borders, as was apparent with the creation of Israel itself. The 2003 road map further insists: "Quartet members promote international recognition of [the] Palestinian state, including possible U.N. membership."
Therefore, General Assembly resolutions in the fall of 2003 can be expected to endorse the road map and its call for the creation of a Palestinian state by December. No Israeli approval is required for a declaration of independence by the Palestinian Authority. The PLO made such a declaration in Algiers in 1988. This time U.N. member states, supported by the road map and these resolutions, will be encouraged to recognize the state and to accord it U.N. membership.
Given that America is routinely outvoted and outmaneuvered at the United Nations, with the occasional exception in the Security Council, it is highly unlikely to be able to stop this U.N.-driven scenario without the brakes being applied quickly.
Which brings us to the ability to apply brakes at all. The road map from the outset requires "Quartet representatives [to] begin informal monitoring and consult with the parties on establishment of a formal monitoring mechanism." No Israeli agreement is required for international monitors.
The United Nations and the European Union continue to seek a part in the monitoring role, despite American leadership. This would allow them to play a part in assessing whether, for example, the Palestinian Authority has satisfied obligations to "begin sustained, targeted and effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror."
There should be no mystery about what international monitors, which include in any capacity the United Nations and the European Union, will produce.
The United Nations has no definition of terrorism. U.N. member states continue to insist that blowing up Israelis is one thing, terrorism another. The U.N. Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution on April 14 of this year, which affirmed the legitimacy of suicide-bombing - or in U.N.-speak "all available means including armed struggle" to resist "foreign occupation and for self-determination." All European Union members of the Commission including Britain and France, with the only exception being Germany, refused to vote against the resolution and merely abstained.
So when Egypt's President Mubarak said this past Tuesday, on behalf of Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority, "We will continue to fight the scourge of terrorism against humanity and reject the culture of extremism and violence in any form or shape - from whatever source or place, regardless of justifications or motives," his language was deliberate sophistry. The Arab Terrorism Convention stipulates their real views, repeated by Saudi officials to the 2003 UN Commission on Human Rights: "We should distinguish between the phenomenon of terrorism and the right of peoples to achieve self-determination."
Just as U.N. bodies dispute the idea of Israelis as victims, they deny Israelis the practical necessities of self-defense. U.N. spokespersons repeatedly blame Israel for the death of Palestinian civilians who are used by their terrorist brethren as human shields. They prefer to ignore the Geneva Convention provision denying immunity to terrorists. It permits the proportionate use of force, even where loss of civilian life is "expected."
The likelihood that international monitors operating in this environment will fairly evaluate either Palestinian compliance with ending terrorism, or satisfaction of the road map's requirement that Israel "take no action undermining trust," is nil.
For all those at the United Nations fretting over the loss of a terrorist state in Iraq, a Palestinian replacement is shortly at hand. Israeli self-defense will soon mean violating international borders. It is not surprising that Arab states are happy to tell Mr. Bush they are all for the road map. What is surprising is that the president is, too.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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