PALESTINE SOLIDARITY COMMITTEE - SEATTLE              
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? ROADMAP TO ?
Will the Roadmap* bring peace, justice, security and human rights
to Israelis and Palestinians?

Peace? The Roadmap:

  • calls for an end to Israel’s violent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but spends much more time telling Palestinians to end resistance than specifying how Israel should end its occupation
  • one-sidedly connects Palestinians with violence without connecting Israel to violence
  • asks Palestinians to make immediate concessions but doesn’t address the tough issues of occupation: refugee return, Jerusalem, borders, water, settlements, prisoners.
  • reverses cause and effect: asks Palestinians to stop resisting occupation before Israel ends the occupation
  • does not mention the Apartheid Wall being built by Israel to confine Palestinians to 40% of the West Bank
Justice? The Roadmap:
  • has no mechanism for pressuring powerful Israel to comply, even though the US could easily suspend its several billion dollar annual aid package to Israel until it complies
  • puts many more demands on the Palestinians (to end violence, have elections, build infrastructure) without telling Israel in similar detail to end house demolitions, settlements, land confiscation, assassinations, torture, imprisonment without charge or trial, expulsions, curfews, and closures
  • makes no mention of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which is the international law governing occupations, and which prohibits all the Israeli actions above
  • puts the US in the role of honest broker, a role it cannot credibly fulfill given its longtime alliance with Israel
  • ignores the vast power inequality between the two parties
Human Rights? The Roadmap:
  • fails to address human rights (see Human Rights Watch’s 15 page document entitled “the Roadmap: Repeating Oslo’s Mistakes -- available online at www.hrw.org)
  • ignores the fact that human rights cannot be bargained away -- that any agreement which allows violations of the human rights of an occupied people (freedom from torture and house demolition, self-determination, etc.) is illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention and so is void
Security? The Roadmap:
  • emphasizes Israel’s need for security, but ignores the Palestinian people’s need for security
  • leaves Palestinians insecure in their homes and streets, under constant threat of attack by Israel as long as the Israeli military occupation continues
  • leaves Israelis insecure because as long as the injustice of occupation continues, Palestinians will continue to resist it


The Roadmap is vague and contradictory. It fails to address Palestinian human rights, Israeli violence, the power imbalance, how the occupation will end, and the right of refugee return. This makes it highly unlikely that peace, justice, security, and human rights can be achieved for both Palestinians and Israelis via the Roadmap.

* The Roadmap was proposed by the US, UN, Europe, and Russia as a two-year peace plan to end the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip with a two-state solution by 2005. Palestinian leaders have accepted the Roadmap and already begun implementing it; Israeli leaders have accepted some parts of it, with 14 conditions.