The 'Road Map' to Peace: Doomed From the Start?

Few observers want peace in the Middle East more than the staff and publishers of The Good News. But we know that there is only one true path to peace—and the players aren't on it. Yet the Bible does guarantee that peace will finally come to the Middle East.

by John Ross Schroeder

Few people—except for a few hopeful diplomats—now dispute the sad fact that the much-touted Mideast road map has been shredded and currently lies in tatters. Phase one of this path, more or less calling for an immediate end to terror and violence, is already way behind schedule. The transition phase (June 2003-December 2003) has never made it off the ground and the final phase—ending the conflict altogether (2004-2005)—remains totally out of sight.

If, as Mideast analyst Daniel Pipes maintains, "the year 2002 will be remembered as a low point in the long conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, when diplomacy came to a standstill, emotion boiled over, blood ran in the streets, and the prospects for all-out war drew closer"—how will we remember the events of 2003 ?

In the early 1990s I was asked to travel to Israel and write an on-the-spot cover article about the prospects for peace in the Middle East. Sadly, events soon sabotaged the project. Conditions became so violent that I was not allowed to enter Israel.

All through the 90s violence ebbed and flowed until we reached the time of the present bloody intifada, begun more than 21/2 years ago. The last year has been marked by the ever-increasing use of the suicide bomber, a gruesome terror tool that has enabled a handful of Palestinians to inflict enormous psychological as well as physical damage on Israelis.

As Foreign Affairs (July-August 2002) puts it, "Both Islamists and secular Palestinians have come to see suicide bombing as a weapon against which Israel has no comprehensive defense." And indeed, how can people defend themselves against a young man (or woman) who believes he will be rewarded in the afterlife if he blows himself to pieces while trying to take with him as many Israeli bystanders as possible?

Read the full article at www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn49/roadmap.htm

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