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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/9/2014, SPi

The Crooked Course xxxv

early 2001 in the small Egyptian seaside town of Taba. They attempted, through bilateral talks, to capitalize on the basic ideas put forward by President Clinton. In spite of high hopes inspired by the Taba talks, hope was dashed by Israeli intransigence, reinforced by the violent uprising across the West Bank and Gaza, as well as internal tensions within the Palestinian leadership.

In an attempt to revive the peace process, President George W. Bush, in a speech in the Rose Garden in June 2002, took the bold step of publicly declaring support for an independent Palestinian state. However, he was convinced that Chairman Arafat was an impediment to peace, due to the continuing violence against Israelis emanating from Gaza and the West Bank. The President made further US involvement in peace negotiations contingent upon Arafat’s removal from power, and the implementation of democratic reforms in the Palestinian Authority’s political structure. This was consistent with Prime Minister Sharon’s policies. At this time, parts of the Palestinian leadership either passively turned a blind eye to the rise of bombings in Israel, or discreetly encouraged it. Arafat became a pariah for several essential players and was isolated in his Muqata headquarters in Ramallah.

Under these dire circumstances, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for a meeting in the conference room of his executive office at United Nations’ Headquarters in New York with the US, Russia, and the European Union. The frustration was deep amongst all parties. Bilateral talks did not happen. Trilateral talks did not work. In response to the breakdown of the peace process, he suggested that the four actors coordinate a position to restart the process. The idea was to combine the political power of the US, Russia’s credibility amongst key Arab states, the European Union’s financial muscle, and the UN’s legitimacy in a potent new international coalition. The UN Secretary-General coined the phrase the “Middle East Quartet” for this informal group. The Quartet met both at principals level and at the level of special envoys.

A novel approach to the imbroglio of Middle East peacemaking was launched: multilateral unilateralism. The concept was launched at a Quartet Envoys’ working dinner at the Norwegian Ambassador’s residence in Herzliya (a suburb of Tel Aviv) by US officials William Burns and David Satterfield. The idea was for the Quartet members to collectively produce an operational peace plan to be presented to the parties for implementation, without prior consultation. This resulted in the Quartet peace plan, referred to as the Road Map, which was eventually presented to the parties as an ultimatum in 2003. In other words, a unified position was imposed by a group of third parties upon the disputants—thus, multilateral unilateralism.

The Quartet collectively submitted the text to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. The US ambassador to Israel presented it to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who refused to meet with the Quartet as a whole. The Palestinian side accepted the proposals in total while the Israeli side came up with fourteen reservations.

The Oslo Accords mapped a path towards a possible peace agreement, setting up milestones to be passed along the way, and stipulating that the ride on this bumpy road would take five years. It did not define the end point of the journey, because the parties were not capable of closing the gaps between their positions at the time. The 2003 Performance-Based Road Map of the Quartet was, in many ways, the paper that concluded the Declaration of Principles of 1993, by designating the last milestone, the establishment of a Palestinian state.

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