Quartet Outlines Road Map Towards Peace in the Middle East
While Violence Continues
By Vikram Sura for the Chronicle
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The bloody deeds followed the meeting of the Quartet-the United Nations, the United States, the Russian Federation and the European Union-at UN Headquarters in New York on 17 September. Following the meeting, Mr. Annan said that the peace process needed to be performance- and hope-driven, "because we need both: performance and hope". The overall plan needed to address the political, economic, humanitarian and institutional dimensions, the Secretary-General said, and that in each phase, both parties should take reciprocal steps. The Israeli Government must allow resumption of economic activity, movement of goods, people and essential services, ease or lift curfew and closures, return the tax revenues owed to the Palestinian Authority and stop all Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territory. The Palestinians, he added, must work with the United States and regional partners to reform their security services and combat terrorism. Outlining the road map drawn by the Quartet towards a final and comprehensive settlement within three years, the Secretary-General said the process would involve three phases. "The first phase will see Palestinian security reform, Israeli withdrawals, and support for Palestinian elections to be held in early 2003". In the second phase, during 2003, Mr. Annan said, "our efforts should focus on the option of creating a Palestinian State with provisional borders and based on a new constitution, as a way station to a permanent status settlement. In the third phase, from 2004 to mid-2005, we envision Israeli-Palestinian negotiations aimed at a permanent status solution." However, in the three days following the Quartet's meeting, from 17 to 19 September, a bomb exploded in a Palestinian school, and two new suicide attacks were perpetrated against Israeli civilians inside Israel. Mr. Annan said that the events represented a tragic step in the opposite direction. "These acts are to be condemned", he told the Security Council in a meeting on the Middle East on 23 September, "both for the utterly unjustifiable loss of life, the pain and misery that they cause to innocent people, and because they set back even further the prospect for a just and lasting settlement". The Secretary-General told the Council that the acts "strike directly at that very hope, which-as the Quartet agreed-is an essential driver of political progress". In his statement to the Council, Mr. Annan once again urged "all Palestinians, especially the leaders of all political factions, to renounce this wicked instrument of terror-clearly and irrevocably, now and forever" and that "even while defending itself against terrorist attacks, Israel should cooperate actively with the Quartet's efforts to reach such a settlement within the next three years". He added that the Palestinians, on their side, needed to understand that there would be no settlement without lasting security for Israel. The same day, the Council adopted resolution 1435 (2002) by a vote of 14 in favour, with the United States abstaining. The text demanded the withdrawal of Israeli security forces towards positions held prior to September 2000 and called on the Palestinian Authority to meet its expressed commitment to bring to justice those responsible for terrorist acts. |
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