In early April, newly sworn-in Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman made waves during his first speech as Foreign Minister when he announced that Israel is not obligated by agreements reached at the Annapolis Conference.

First and foremost, the agreement required that Israeli security demands be met.

Israel is only obligated, he said, to abide by the Road Map, and its terms must be followed precisely and in order. While these two plans for Israeli-Palestinian peace have the same goal of a two-state solution, they go about achieving those aims through very different methods.

The Road Map was presented by President George Bush to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in April of 2003, and the Israeli government subsequently adopted the document with a number of reservations. The US-backed peace proposal set a series of benchmarks designed to move Israelis and Palestinians, over a three-year period, to the creation of a Palestinian state that would exist in peace with Israel.

Basically, the document envisioned a bottom-up performance-based series of confidence-building measures taking place step-by-step in three phases. First and foremost, the agreement required that Israeli security demands be met. That involved the Palestinians ending terrorism and incitement against Israel, dismantling terrorist organizations, conducting comprehensive political reforms in preparation for responsible statehood, and recognizing Israel's right to exist in peace and security. For its part, Israel was to ease restrictions on the movement of people and goods, withdraw from Palestinian areas occupied after September 28, 2000, freeze settlement construction, and dismantle settlement "outposts" erected after March 2001.

The second stage involved establishing a Palestinian state within temporary boundaries; and the third involved final status negotiations on the "core issues" of permanent borders of a Palestinian state, refugees, settlements, determining the status of Jerusalem, and international recognition for both Palestine and Israel.

In a series of letters exchanged in April 2004 between Bush and Sharon, Bush confirmed that "Palestinians must undertake an immediate cessation of armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere, and all official Palestinian institutions must end incitement against Israel." He also confirmed that the Palestinians "had to act decisively against terror by dismantling terrorist capabilities and infrastructures" and to undertake"comprehensive and fundamental political reforms." In the letter, Bush recognized as well that existing major Israeli population centers on the West Bank prevented "a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949"; meaning that a future Israeli-Palestinian land-swap could not be ruled out. The difficult "core issues" in Phase 3, however, would be left to the final phase of the settlement. That is, the Palestinians first had to prove, by their actions and in accordance with established benchmarks, that they accepted Israel's right to live in peace and security as a pre-condition to dealing with the "final status issues."

The Annapolis Declaration of November 2007, however, turned the Road Map on its head. It envisioned a top-down process primarily because the Palestinians were unwilling to fulfill their Phase 1 Road Map responsibilities concerning terrorism. Annapolis attempted to reverse the process by demanding that the Phase 3 "final status issues" of the Road Map be negotiated immediately.

President Bush once said that a "Palestinian state will never be created by terror"; yet, at Annapolis he insisted that a Palestinian state should be created regardless of terror. The problem is that the years of intifada that followed the failure at Camp David in July 2000, not to mention decades of Palestinian deceit and terror, have deepened the chasm of disagreement over these Phase 3 issues.

If the Israelis balk at a two-state solution, their hesitation is based on the reasonable assumption that such a state would, in the end, be controlled by terrorists and would represent an existential threat. While the US would never countenance a terrorist state contiguous to the continental United States, at Annapolis it had no qualms about requiring Israel to accept such a threat.

Changing the emphasis from the bottom-up, performance-based terms of the Road Map to the top-down Annapolis process brings to the fore the essence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A two-state solution cannot come to pass unless and until the Arab world reconciles itself to the idea of a Jewish state in the Middle East. Since neither Fatah nor Hamas have shown any inclination to do so, their failure must preclude any discussion on the other "final status issues" set forth in the Road Map.

More to the point, both Palestinian organizations are ideologically committed to the annihilation of the Jewish state. And they are not alone. According to a recent Norwegian poll taken by the Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies, 33 percent of Palestinians seek the annihilation of the state of Israel - whether by political means or force of arms - to be replaced by a single Islamic republic; and another 20 percent favor a united Israeli-Palestinian state, to be eventually engulfed by the latter population. Acknowledging the right of Israel to exist as a sovereign state in the Middle East would mean acceptance of Jewish historical and Biblical ties to the land, and such acceptance by the Palestinians today is an illusion.

Into this fray comes an Israeli Foreign Minister who has the chutzpah to tell the world that he intends to put the Palestinians "feet to the fire" by insisting that they comply precisely with Phase 1 of the Road Map (ending terrorism, dismantling terrorist infrastructures, and ending incitement to terrorism, which the majority of Palestinians see as legitimate "resistance" against an illegal state).

For his position on the Road Map, Lieberman has now been condemned as a man "beyond the pale", a "hawkish nationalist," an "ultranationalist" and, for good measure, "a racist". But are his demands so unreasonable? Whatever happened to the premise that terrorists must be defeated and the swamps that breed them had

He intends to put the Palestinians "feet to the fire" by insisting that they comply precisely with Phase 1 of the Road Map.

to be drained? A return to Annapolis would mean that the policy enshrined in the Road Map no longer matters and is to be replaced by one less focused on achieving peace than on maintaining the appearance of a "peace process".

In the near future, Israel can expect increasing pressure from the US to "accept" a two-state solution immediately - that is, a return to the Annapolis Declaration - even though the majority of Palestinians and Israelis, albeit for entirely different reasons, have rejected it. Perhaps Avigdor Lieberman did not go far enough in explaining his government's position. It would have been far better had he clarified the Israeli position to the Palestinians, the Europeans and to President Obama in less diplomatic terms. Perhaps something like this:

"Tell you what, if you recognize Israel as a sovereign state in the Middle East, prove you are dismantling your terrorist infrastructures, stop sending your suicide bombers into our cities, towns and marketplaces, stop inciting hatred and spreading blood libels through your media, your mosques, your educational system and throughout your society, stop brainwashing your children into believing that the fast track to virgins in Paradise requires them to become human grenades and murder as many Jews as possible, stop firing missiles at us, and cease behaving like a failed, terrorist state, then we'll come to the table with a settlement offer that will bring both our societies peace and prosperity."

Sound reasonable? Absolutely. Is that going to happen any time soon? Don't hold your breath.