The truth is that if we look carefully at the transcript of Bush’s words to the Egyptian daily al-Ahram, it doesn’t seem that his intention was to bury the chances of a Palestinian State emerging in the year 2005. What he wanted to say was rather that it will be “hard” to keep Palestinian independence on schedule. But the funny thing is that it doesn’t matter what his intention was, because the American president has a rare ability: He conveys his thoughts better when his tongue slips. It seems that only when Bush is wrong he is sincere. It’s then that he says what he really thinks. And what he really thinks about the Palestinian independent State is that it will exist when, where, and with the size that Israel will allow. If she does allow it. Just that.

That is why one feels silly writing that the Road Map is dead. Actually, it was never alive. It never existed but to help us journalists to come up with smart headlines using the different metaphors of “road” and “map.” Now, Bush himself has joined this game by saying that the plan has hit a “bump in the road.” But is not the state of the road that matters. What really matters is who owns the road, and this one looks increasingly like a settlers’ by-pass road.

All this was only too obvious since the very day that, in a speech naïvely deemed historical by many, Bush introduced the foundations of what was to be the Road Map. He then spoke of this process as his “vision”, using this telling word which etymologically means both “utopic dream” and “mirage.” It has come to be the latter, as you would predict just by checking the American record in peace plans.

Naturally, Bush mentions “violence” as for the cause that has spoiled his vision. And violence, in fact, there is, abundantly, and in both sides. But when Bush says “violence” he thinks just of the Palestinians, upon whom thus is once more downloaded the odd guilt of prolonging their subjection by fighting it. Israel, a country born partly thanks to its use of terrorism, is lucky that the same rules didn’t apply to her own independence in 1948. Pushing a bit further the argument, even the context in which the US became an independent state (with all that Concord, Lexington and Bunker Hill thing), cannot be described as peaceful either. But, of course, comparisons are hateful, particularly when they don’t make you look well.The compensation for the Palestinian side, this time: Condoleezza Rice will meet Abu Ala in Berlin. Try and call that a compensation. In any case, it appears that Rice will put pressure on Abu Ala for him to “put an end to violence”, something he can’t do even if he wanted to. She will ask him even to back Sharon’s “unilateral separation” plan, something he wouldn’t do even if he wanted to. Among other things, because the Palestinian P.M. resides in the West Bank town of Abu Dis, a location that is precisely being divided by the separation wall and he woudn't be able to return home then. Exactly what already happens to some four million Palestinians.

Miguel Murado