Sometimes, I wish I were a cartoonist. The thoughts I have after listening to George Bush's speech about Annapolis are more suited to the clear and graphic three-dimensional nature of cartooning than to the more subtle art of word-smithing, but I can't draw. So, here's a description of the cartoon in my head:


It is a large, black-and-white single panel. On the lower right-hand corner of the mostly

Here's a description of the cartoon in my head.

dark panel would be a too-small sedan crammed full of the Quartet representatives, Condoleezza Rice and Ehud Olmert prominent in the front seat. The sedan is stopped on the side of the road with the Quartet members hunched over a dog-eared "Road Map of the Middle East," squinting to read it with a small pen-light. Meanwhile, in a sports-car heading down the same road at a high rate of speed are two terrorists, bomb-belts strapped to their bodies, with a well-lit GPS navigator on the dash instructing them to, "Proceed directly to Jerusalem."


Under the panel would be the words, "Olmert and the Quartet stick to the Roadmap."


I don't own a map. Like many people in the world today, I rely on a constantly updated and extremely reliable Global Positioning System (GPS) in my car. There is a reason I don't use maps anymore. Maps are costly, maps are hard to read, maps are difficult to update, and maps do not contain information about traffic patterns, road blocks and construction headaches. In a word, maps are obsolete. So, why did Olmert agree to commit Israel to following an outdated Road Map to Peace?


The Road Map was first outlined by US President Bush in a speech on June 24, 2002, in which he called for an independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel in peace. The agreement to make a Road Map for Peace, overseen by the Quartet, was signed at the Red Sea Summit in Aqaba, Jordan, on June 4, 2003.


At that time:


  • Ariel Sharon was the Prime Minister of Israel;
  • Yasser Arafat was the head of the Palestinian Authority;
  • Bush was finishing up his first term in office and set to face Al Gore in the upcoming presidential election;
  • Gaza was full of prosperous Jewish citizens;
  • Olmert had just left his job as Mayor of Jerusalem for his first cabinet position as Deputy Prime Minister (Likud);
  • there was no such thing as Kadima;
  • US gas prices had surged to $1.81 a gallon;
  • Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser were still home with their families;
  • the Second Lebanon War hadn't happened; and
  • Hamas was a terrorist group, not the democratically elected leader of the PA.
It was a long time ago. At the time that the Road Map was implemented, there were Israelis who thought that giving up Gush Katif would lead to peace. They thought that there could be a way out of the Intifada by making concessions to the Arabs. But it didn't work.


Every attempt made by the Israeli government to follow the Road Map for Peace was matched by a greater and more determined attempt at war by the PA. Talk of peace brought war. Land concessions brought violence. What some had thought of as a road to peace became a highway to Hell. But that didn't change the map.


So, here we are in 2007, committed to that outdated Road Map for Peace by a washed-up, indicted and profoundly unpopular Prime Minister leading the weak made-up party of Kadima, whose existence is owed to the Gaza pullout and whose platform is still based upon the failed idea of land-for-peace concessions. He is supposed to negotiate peace with an ineffective Palestinian leader who is at war with his own democratically elected Hamas leadership in Gaza and has absolutely no power to influence the terrorists targeting Israel. These "leaders" have been urged into this politically expedient "peace process" as a last-ditch effort by a less-than-popular, lame-duck US President who has nothing to gain but a nice, framed portrait of himself making "peace" for his presidential library.


Meanwhile, Sderot is under constant rocket fire; Gaza is a nest of terrorism waiting to attack; Abbas is claiming Hevron, Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount as his own; Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser are still missing; Iran is going

Politicians feel they can ignore the new realities that exist in Middle East.

nuclear; and Israel's military has been so embarrassed by the Second Lebanon War that they have lost much hope of averting an attack from the Arab nations surrounding us.


Sadly, politicians feel they can ignore the new realities that exist in Middle East by pulling off onto a shoulder in the road and claiming they have only become disoriented and simply need to find their location on an outdated map in order to proceed. But this is not the case.


Olmert must deal with the facts on the ground, not the green lines on an obsolete map. Since the Road Map was written, popular routes have become dead ends, and roads that were thought to lead somewhere have become mired. There is no peace at the end of the Road Map he holds, and unless our leaders are willing to understand new realities and know that there is a new global positioning in the world, they may have gotten Israel entirely lost.