Ephraim Halevy, former head of the Mossad Intelligence Agency and former director of the National Security Council, stated the Road Map plan presented by the United States will not work. Halevy stated that Israel, the PA, and the US are fully aware of that fact.
Currently in charge of the Center for Strategic and Policy Studies at the Hebrew University's School of Public Policy, Halevy was invited to address the Foreign Press Association today (Tuesday).
Halevy said the Palestinian Authority cannot confront, dismantle and disarm militant groups as the road map demands. In addition, the plan's timeline - which calls for a preliminary Palestinian state by 2003 and a permanent entity by 2005 - is irrelevant, he said.
Responding line by line to the four-page document jointly drawn up by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia, Halevy attacked the plan's inconsistencies and incongruities. It was a "strategic mistake" for Israel to have accepted the document, he said, adding that Israel's 14 official reservations are meaningless.
"The road map... cannot be implemented. It can not be implemented. We know this, and the Palestinians know this, and the United States knows this," Halevy told the group of foreign journalists.
Halevy said it did not seem as though the Palestinian Authority has any desire for a state at this point, noting they have taken almost none of the steps necessary to set up the offices, bureaucracy, or legal and security networks needed to run a country. He said one of the reasons the PA is so relaxed about setting up the infrastructure necessary to establish a state is because they believe that time is on their side.
Halevy believes there has been a shift away from the phased-plan of using a Palestinian state to launch further attacks on Israel to a patient hold-out for an Arab majority between the Jordan and Mediterranean thereby creating a Palestinian state from the river to the sea. “Yasser Arafat has said very often that the future of the conflict will be decided in the womb of the Palestinian mother," Halevy said. There are Palestinians who believe "one should drag your feet... and bide time until these processes reach fruition."
Faced with a steady flow of Israeli concessions and the leverage of a demographic conquest, the PA is therefore seen by Halevy as uninterested in a state covering ‘only’ Yesha (Judea, Samaria and Gaza).
"I think that is the strategy which causes the continued support for terrorist attacks," Halevy said.
Currently in charge of the Center for Strategic and Policy Studies at the Hebrew University's School of Public Policy, Halevy was invited to address the Foreign Press Association today (Tuesday).
Halevy said the Palestinian Authority cannot confront, dismantle and disarm militant groups as the road map demands. In addition, the plan's timeline - which calls for a preliminary Palestinian state by 2003 and a permanent entity by 2005 - is irrelevant, he said.
Responding line by line to the four-page document jointly drawn up by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia, Halevy attacked the plan's inconsistencies and incongruities. It was a "strategic mistake" for Israel to have accepted the document, he said, adding that Israel's 14 official reservations are meaningless.
"The road map... cannot be implemented. It can not be implemented. We know this, and the Palestinians know this, and the United States knows this," Halevy told the group of foreign journalists.
Halevy said it did not seem as though the Palestinian Authority has any desire for a state at this point, noting they have taken almost none of the steps necessary to set up the offices, bureaucracy, or legal and security networks needed to run a country. He said one of the reasons the PA is so relaxed about setting up the infrastructure necessary to establish a state is because they believe that time is on their side.
Halevy believes there has been a shift away from the phased-plan of using a Palestinian state to launch further attacks on Israel to a patient hold-out for an Arab majority between the Jordan and Mediterranean thereby creating a Palestinian state from the river to the sea. “Yasser Arafat has said very often that the future of the conflict will be decided in the womb of the Palestinian mother," Halevy said. There are Palestinians who believe "one should drag your feet... and bide time until these processes reach fruition."
Faced with a steady flow of Israeli concessions and the leverage of a demographic conquest, the PA is therefore seen by Halevy as uninterested in a state covering ‘only’ Yesha (Judea, Samaria and Gaza).
"I think that is the strategy which causes the continued support for terrorist attacks," Halevy said.