Petulance and pandemonium in Petra

The roadmap was presented to the Government of Israel with a request from the President that it respond with contributions to this document to advance true peace. The United States Government received a response from the Government of Israel, explaining its significant concerns about the roadmap. The United States shares the view of the Government of Israel that these are real concerns, and will address them fully and seriously in the implementation of the roadmap to fulfil the President's vision of June 24, 2002.

On May 25, 2003, the Israeli Cabinet met and by a majority resolved:

Based on the 23 May 2003 statement of the United States Government, in which the United States committed to fully and seriously address Israel's comments to the Roadmap during the implementation phase, the Prime Minister announced on 23 May 2003 that Israel has agreed to accept the steps set out in the Roadmap.

The Government of Israel affirms the Prime Minister's announcement, and resolves that all of Israel's comments, as addressed in the Administration's statement, will be implemented in full during the implementation phase of the Roadmap.

Israel's rejection of the Arab peace initiative could not have been more clearly delivered or underscored.

So what was Moussa hoping to achieve by his petulance in Petra? Clearly he is very frustrated as he sees the Roadmap disappearing down the diplomatic drain as the Arabs continue their intransigent demands that Israel return to the June 4, 1967 borders and that 450,000 Jews pack up and vacate their homes.

Trying to distance the Arab League from any consequences for maintaining those demands must have been uppermost in his mind as he then publicly admonished Peres:

Stop building settlements. You keep constructing settlements and demolishing Palestinian homes. What peace are you talking about?

His remarks repeated the tired old mantra castigating the Jews for wanting to live in any part of their biblical heartland while serving to detract any attention from the ineffectual role played by the 22 members of the Arab League in realising the objectives of the Road Map in these four key areas:

1. failing to prevent Gaza and the West Bank being split into two separate territorial units under two different power structures;
    
2. failing to persuade either Egypt or Jordan to offer part of their lands to the Palestinian Arabs as an inducement to moderating the Arab League demand for 100 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza;
    
3. failing to have the border between Gaza and Egypt opened to allow the humanitarian flow of food and medicine into Gaza or to allow Gazans the opportunity to emigrate through Egypt to other Arab States either temporarily or permanently; and
    
4. pledging no more than a miserly 20 per cent of the total pledges made at the international donors fund set up in Paris to help their own brothers and allowing many pledges to still remain unpaid.

Arab League members no doubt will cheer Moussa for having stood up to the "Zionist aggressors". Once again rhetoric has overcome reason and an occasion for goodwill, recognition and mutual respect has been turned into a dummy spit by the Arabs' top diplomat and negotiator.

Moussa's grandstanding has only lowered - not elevated - his own standing. The Arabs may not be fools - Moussa certainly is.