The current intransigence of Israeli policy towards Palestine will not bring peace to the Middle East, argues Ali Halimeh
The UN, EU, Russian Federation and the US recently outlined a road map for achieving a final Middle East settlement within three years, but as each day slips by the plan seems less realistic.
Unfortunately, no one seems to have told the quartet that the roads in the Middle East are unreliable, where pregnant Palestinian women must wait for hours at Israeli roadblocks, where Israeli soldiers indiscriminately shoot Palestinian taxi-drivers at disguised checkpoints, and where daily military curfews play havoc with the itinerary of even the most seasoned diplomats.
But the roadblocks are signposts to something even more sinister - the lacklustre commitment of Israel to peace.
Israeli governments have continuously reneged on political agreements over the past decade, and with the greatest enthusiasm cling to the latest suicide bombing, allowing extremists operating in complete isolation to derail even advanced peace negotiations.
Then, since September 11th last year, the policy of the Israeli government has been to safeguard security and punish terrorists. This seemingly benign mantra, which has an understandable audience in the US, is the umbrella that has allowed Israel in effect to abandon peace.
Today, the mantra hides some of the brutal facts about the unabated subjugation of Palestinians.
In the two years since September 2000, when Ariel Sharon ignited the current unrest with his goading visit to the Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem, Israel has inflicted massive civilian casualties and unlimited destruction across Palestinian territory. We have witnessed an unprecedented regression in the slowly built trust and mutual respect of the two peoples which were the silver-lined dividends of the now almost-defunct Oslo accords.
These days hate is the only currency that each side understands. There is an undeniable insanity in the politics of the region, where peace has become a labyrinth of confused rhetoric.
The evidence, statistical or otherwise, to suggest that Palestinians are engaged in unequivocal terrorism above and beyond Israel, continues to defy basic reasoning. Palestinians stand accused of terrorism based on the acts of individuals, while the state of Israel, a country with an illegal occupation force which has inflicted massive deaths, injuries and heaped countless humanitarian abuses on the Palestinian civilian population, has widely escaped condemnation.
The evil of terrorism is not solely limited to misguided groups but is an infection which plagues the very core of national policy in certain states such as Israel.
If we agree that terrorism is the indiscriminate targeting of civilians, then Israel as a state needs to stand accused, otherwise terrorism and all it means shall become a rhetorical shuttlecock which one side uses to delegitimise the other.
During the recent lull in suicide bombings by Palestinian extremists, more than 100 Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli forces in a continuation of their insidious campaign, evidently devoid of any pretext other than to subjugate and terrorise Palestinian civilians.
The human dimension of the conflict is currently so grave that the UN special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process, Terje Roed-Larsen, has warned that "before the eyes of the world, the Palestinian civilian population is scrambling to survive".
International aid is critically required to stave off malnutrition, epidemics and other threats to the survival of the Palestinian population.
The UN has reported that rising poverty and unemployment in the West Bank and Gaza, since Israel reoccupied the territory, could be a "human catastrophe" . This situation has arisen as a result of massive civilian casualties, military incursions, disruptions, curfews, the strangulation of a once-thriving local economy, closures, and the destruction of infrastructure, including schools and hospitals.
Mr Sharon's military reoccupation of the West Bank and parts of Gaza has been condemned internationally, and yet he continues to defy UN Security Council resolutions demanding an Israeli withdrawal. Curfews remain in place in major Palestinian cities, resulting in the virtual house arrest of 500,000 civilians in Jenin, Tulkarem, Ramallah, Hebron and Nablus.
Children are being denied adequate food, education and the guardianship of parents, who are arbitrarily arrested or detained.
One thing must be clear to even the most distant observer - the current intransigence of Israeli policy will never bring peace and will almost certainly, if allowed to continue, cause a stir of violence only occasionally witnessed in this conflict-ridden world. Such policies will not deter or prevent the next suicide bomber. There seems to be no end in sight, and an ever-narrowing set of options. For Palestinians trying to escape half a century of occupation, dispossession and humiliation, this is a disaster.
Mr Sharon has shown limited signs of wavering in his campaign to try to delegitimise the Palestinian people and their representatives, the Palestinian Authority. Nor does he show any sign of ceasing in his aggressive programme to continue to build settlements, destroy homes, wreak havoc on the local economy, deport and indiscriminately murder Palestinian citizens.
Although widely recognised that there is no military solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Israeli government is yet hell-bent on conflict.
At this stage, only through serious and comprehensive measures to de-escalate the current conflict, as called for by the Palestinians, will Mr Sharon be able to maintain his promise to the Israeli electorate of peace and security.
A stagnant international system seems unable to oblige states to abide by Security Council resolutions. The most recent Security Council resolution (1435) demanded the complete cessation of all violence, including all acts of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction.
The US must realise that it bears an inordinate responsibility to the Israelis and the Palestinians. Its influence must be exercised in a fair manner, and it must avoid its current policy which is a recipe for confrontation. The interests of the US lie in a stable Middle East.
This is the time to exercise balance. We are at a crossroads in history when a solution can be fostered among the peoples who inhabit historical Palestine. Should this opportunity be neglected, then this period will long be a scourge on our collective memory.
Palestinians have on more than one occasion made it perfectly clear that the option for our people is to pursue peace according to the stated vision of "land for peace" in the Madrid and Oslo agreements.
We wish to abide by the vision of the US-sponsored Security Council (1397) resolution which envisioned two states living side by side in mutual peace. Unfortunately, in the absence of an immediate solution, we will continue to encounter the current drastic situation which continues to create bitter enmity.