Strategic Assessment

More than five months after the official publication of the Quartet’s “Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” the process prescribed in that document has failed to unfold. Like all the other initiatives launched since the outbreak of the so-called intifada in the fall of 2000 – the Sharm el-Sheikh summit, the Mitchell Committee report, the Tenet work plan, the Zinni work plan – this one may technically still be on the table. But for all practical purposes, it is, if not dead, then at least in a state of suspended animation. The Palestinian Authority has not undertaken a serious reform in governing structures, unified its security services, or taken any substantial steps to end hostile incitement or dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructures. Israel, for its part, has failed to halt the targeted attacks on wanted terrorists and the demolition of houses belong to terrorists or their relatives, to ease roadblocks and closures, or to redeploy forces to positions held before the outbreak of the intifada. Nor did it respond to requests for the release of prisoners held for security offenses, a step that was not specified in the roadmap but was raised after its publication as the kind of confidence-building measure that might have strengthened the political stature of the Palestinian Prime Minister, Mahmoud al-Abbas (Abu Mazen).