[ OUR OPINION ]

Israel needs to allow
‘road map’ time to work

THE ISSUE Palestinian attacks on Israelis and retaliation by Israeli military have jeopardized peace efforts in the Middle East.

THE most recent wave of violence in the Middle East threatens to destroy a plan for peace that Israelis and Palestinians had agreed upon little more than two weeks ago. The "rebuilt and refocused Palestinian Authority security apparatus" envisioned in the "road map to peace" is far from the point of being able to confront Islamic terrorists. Israeli attacks targeting terrorist leaders have served only to undermine the effort. Outside intervention may be needed to get both sides past the plan's initial phase.

The Hamas, the terrorist Islamic Resistance Movement, restarted the cycle of violence a week ago by killing five Israeli soldiers. The attack should not have been a surprise, since the Hamas rejected the peace plan. Israel retaliated with a failed attempt to assassinate Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi, and that was followed by a Hamas suicide bombing that killed 17 Israelis aboard a Jerusalem bus. The cycle of violence continued through the rest of the week.

President Bush's call for restraint was ignored as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered further assassinations of Hamas leaders, resulting in Palestinian civilian casualties, after every terrorist attack on Israelis. Sharon belittled the Palestinians as "crybabies" and his peace partner, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, as "a chick who hasn't grown his feathers."

Abbas had begun negotiations with leaders of militant groups immediately after the peace agreement was signed, but such talks were futile from the outset. In the absence of an adequate Palestinian security force and despite Bush's scolding, Sharon felt free to launch military strikes that served only to weaken moderate Palestinian leadership and strengthen the standing of Yasser Arafat.

The peace plan calls for monitoring of the Palestinian security effort by the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, but that intended phase of the place plan has been torn asunder by the Israeli strikes. Sharon must stand aside and allow Abbas an opportunity to build an effective police force to counter the terrorist activity.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has suggested the deployment of armed peacekeepers to keep the warring parties apart long enough to begin implementing the peace plan. The road map assigned the United States with the prime responsibility for rebuilding and training the Palestinian security force in collaboration with an "outside oversight board" comprised of the United States, Egypt and Jordan.

An international peacekeeping force -- with a prominent Arab face -- might provide time to build such a security force without undercutting Palestinian leadership. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has assigned Secretary of State Colin Powell and other envoys to the Middle East to seek concessions from both the Palestinians and Israelis to get the plan back on the road to peace.