Stardate 20030528.1338

(On Screen): The AP reports that some Israelis are worried about why Sharon seems to have agreed to the "Roadmap to Peace" and are worried about his motives.

Theories abound: Sharon is trying to secure his place in history. He is trying to deflect U.S. pressure. He is trying to avoid blame, assuming the Palestinians will themselves scuttle the plan by failing to stop terrorism.

Bingo! Got it on the fourth try. This plan is going to fail, but it's going to be the Palestinians who will get the blame. Sharon can buy time by playing along, and can set the Palestinians up for the fall. And while all that is going on, the larger march of events will make the overall situation for Israel much better.

It already has, with the fall of Iraq, and now that the crosshairs are spending a lot of time lingering on Tehran and Damascus there's every prospect that it's going to keep improving. If foreign support for the Palestinian extremists dries up, that can only be good for Israel.

I analyzed the details of the Roadmap here, and one of the critical facts about it is that the Palestinians have to accomplish a lot in the first phase before Israel has to make any significant concessions at all. Even more important is who decides if the Palestinians have actually "done enough."

It's the Quartet (EU, US, UN, Russia) but not really all of them. The Quartet ended up deciding to set up four "monitoring committees", but they're not all present on all of them. Two of the four will be American, and they're the most important two.

The EU will monitor "reform", so we can write that one off right now. Whatever reforms the Palestinians make will be considered adequate, no matter how paper thin they are.

The UN will monitor "economic and humanitarian matters", whatever that means. It isn't particularly critical, and whatever it is, approval of Palestinian actions will be a rubber stamp.

But the US will monitor "security" and "other matters". Which is to say that it will be the US which decides whether the Palestinian Authority has done an adequate job of cracking down on militant groups like Hamas and Hizbollah.

And it's going to take a lot more than just polite requests. As long as there are any terrorist attacks, and as long as those groups appear to still have the ability to mount such attacks, there will be no progress on the Roadmap because we won't sign off.

As a practical matter, the Palestinians will not come even remotely close to accomplishing all the things required of them in phase I.

But if they do, then in fact that would be good for Israel, too. And either way, it reduces the criticism aimed at Israel and will consume a lot of time during which larger events will continue to develop in Israel's favor. So playing along is all to the good, until such time as Israel actually is faced with doing something important and irreversible.