July 15, 2003

From the Madrid conference in 1991 to Oslo, from the Gaza/Jericho Accords to Camp David, the Saudi plan and now with the Road Map, the game is the same Ñ the liquidation of the century old Palestinian struggle for self-determination.

With the Road Map, as with the Tenet and Mitchell plans, the primary thrust of U.S./Israeli policy is to coerce a layer of Palestinian misleaders into becoming the local instruments of repression. The "security forces" of the Palestinian authority are under the direct control of the Central Intelligence Agency. Their task is the pacification of a population whose land has been confiscated by the Israeli state and whose water supply has been stolen permanently.

If that were not enough, an electrified wall with deep trenches and roads alongside, extending north to south with extensions on an east-west axis, has been built surrounding Palestinian towns such as Qalqiya and Tulkarem as well as East Jerusalem. The "Seam" cuts off multiple villages from their surrounding farm land and splits off 210,000 Palestinians from open access to the West Bank.

The barrier is based upon the Wehrmacht blueprint for the walled ghetto of Warsaw and is designed to create conditions for the seizure of remaining Palestinian land and the expulsion of its inhabitants.

As Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone reveal, the Road Map - as with other plans - can in no way meet the aspirations of the Palestinian people, whose struggle is linked inextricably with that of peoples oppressed throughout the Middle East.