A Road Map to Nowhere

First, in its initial phase, the road map makes restrictions on Israeli settlement activity contingent on Palestinian security performance. As senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council in 2002 and early 2003, when the road map was being prepared, coauthor Flynt Leverett argued that the call for Israel to halt settlement activity in the first phase needed to stand on its own - just as the call for Palestinians to take action against terror and violence was not contingent on improvements in Israeli behavior. However, under pressure from the Sharon government, President Bush and his senior national security team retreated on this pivotal issue.

In the real world, Palestinian security performance will never be perfect, so, under the road map, Israel will never be obliged to stop settlement activity -- not even through the kind of settlement "freeze" that was theoretically entertained by Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert (with ample allowance for the "natural growth" of existing settlements). Had President Obama explicitly declared Israeli settlements illegal, however, his call for a halt to settlement activity would not be based on a (disputable) judgment that such activity is "unhelpful" or creates "facts on the ground" that prejudge final negotiating outcomes. Instead, the U.S. call to end settlement activity would be grounded in a straightforward argument: Because Israeli settlements are illegal, no negotiating process rooted in international law could responsibly tolerate their expansion.

Beyond its mishandling of the settlements issue, the road map's most significant flaw comes in its third and final phase, where not a single word is presented regarding the parameters for resolving the "final status" issues -- borders, Jerusalem, and Palestinian refugees -- at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We all know what these parameters are: 1967 boundaries will be the starting point for negotiating final borders, with the possibility of marginal and mutually agreed adjustments. Jerusalem will be shared as the capital of both Israel and Palestine, with special arrangements for the holy sites in the center of the Old City. Whatever arrangements are made to recompense and resettle Palestinian refugees, perhaps even with the theoretical acknowledgement of a "right of return," those arrangements will not be implemented in a way that threatens Israel's Jewish-majority character.

Without such final-status parameters, there can be no credible political horizon for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But their omission was no accident. Again, during 2002 and early 2003, Flynt Leverett argued vociferously within the White House that such parameters were essential. But President Bush and his senior national-security team believed them to be unfairly demanding of Israel, and refused to include them.

By explicitly declaring Israeli settlements illegal, Obama could have transcended this fatal flaw in the road map. If settlements are illegal, then no negotiating process grounded in international law could take any starting point other than the 1967 boundaries for negotiating final borders. Similarly, if settlements are illegal, then any negotiating process grounded in international law would have to start from the premise that all of Jerusalem cannot remain under exclusive Israeli control.

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