Gwyn Prins: Give road maps a chance

Not before time, the international community is using all necessary means to complete the task of returning peace and security to the wider Middle East, as mandated in the Gulf war resolution 678 in 1990. It will also thereby expunge the debt of honour to the Iraqi opponents of Saddam Hussein who heeded George Bush Snr's call to revolt, who were then betrayed by him when he failed to accomplish that mandate, and who were slaughtered in their tens of thousands. Saddam was, of course, in part the West's creation. All the heavier responsibility, therefore, for it to end this terror soon.

But it has long been obvious that Israel and the world will continue to experience terrorism unless a solution is found to the running sore of the Israeli-Palestinian problem. It rises from the vortices of hopelessness in the Palestinian territories where tragic third-generation children absorb the deeply held prejudices of Islamist fundamentalism. They prove their rite of passage to adulthood by strapping on belts of explosives to kill Jews. Yasser Arafat will be remembered for his ability never to miss a diplomatic opportunity, and condemned for allowing and encouraging the moral perversion that turns young Palestinians into exploding bombs.

The depth of alienation between Israelis and Palestinians has driven both sides to despair. It pushes the one side into the hands of Ariel Sharon and the other into those of the hard-line rejectionists: those who would throw the Jews into the sea and whom Arafat sought to placate by his fatal demand for a right of 1948 return which sank the Barak offer and government. A fortnight ago, at Tufts University, I had the privilege of sharing a forum with Ami Ayalon, a former head of Shin Bet, and Sari Nusseibeh, the vice-chancellor of Al-Quds University. Both sadly concede that the positive forces in Israel and Palestine cannot prevail without the application of external power. That was also the conclusion reached by the Peel Commission report of 1937, when the British held the Palestine mandate. In the new imperial age which we are entering, that responsibility falls – can only fall – to the United States. So the proposed American "road map" is a latter-day Peel Commission but, unlike that failed enterprise, must be much smarter in seeking to engage the confidence of the opposing parties.

Therefore it is heartening that President Bush Jnr has chosen the eve of the liberation of Iraq to declare that he recognises that a durable settlement for either Iraq or Palestine requires a settlement of both. This is a statement of the obvious and, obviously, of American self-interest; and that is why it would be rash to denigrate it. In June, Bush called on the Palestinians to elect a leadership untainted by terror and independent of Arafat. That is an essential precondition to the provision of a credible negotiating partner for the Israelis – the thing which the Clinton administration and the EU tried, but failed, to make of Arafat. You can't teach that old dog new tricks. The arrival of the experienced negotiator Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen) as Palestinian prime minister has been widely welcomed. Explaining the timing of Friday's announcement, an American spokesman said, "This is evidence of reform. The Palestinians themselves are taking action and it is important that that action be acknowledged." Bush's announcement of the "road map", already briefed to Egypt and Jordan, was greeted with enthusiasm yesterday by senior Israeli and Palestinian spokesmen. It is an indispensable adjunct to the removal of Saddam and is shrewd carrot-and-stick psychology.

The moment when power is about to be applied decisively is propitious for boldness. The minimum prescription for the settlement that the US must impose on both parties is equally straightforward and difficult: a recognised state and normal security for Israel; a recognised state and normal security for the Palestinians, and general underwriting of both. The Palestinians have to give the Israelis believable extinguishing of terrorism. For the Israelis, as Bush stated bluntly on Friday (and only an American president can say this and be believed): "As progress is made towards peace, settlement activity in the Occupied Territories must end." Of course we must parse that minutely: new settlement activity? Existing settlements? Some? All? West Bank and Gaza only or also Golan (probably a show-stopper with the Israelis if he means that)? But none of it can be achieved in one step. This is where there could be a positive link with the post-Saddam settlement. The Palestinians can extricate themselves from the mire of the intifada in a way that the Israelis might trust only if the United States stands as guarantor.

We learn that, as one might hope, while together the French and Mr Blair are putting the Security Council through unnecessary agony over the 18th Iraq resolution, UN deputy secretary-general Louise Fréchette has been leading the planning for Unami – the assistance mission for Iraq. If all goes well, this can become the takeover administration after the period of the government of military occupation. It could be a modernised adaptation of the principles in the long-sleeping trusteeship chapter of the UN charter.

And it is precisely such a modernised trusteeship arrangement that offers a credible intermediate step for the Palestinians and Israelis. For example, if – backed by the Americans – the Palestinian territories could become, for a period, strategic areas under the direct responsibility of the Security Council (article 82), with a UN assistance mission to Palestine that draws on the potentially positive experiences of Unami, the road map might start to get us somewhere other than back in the fire.

It is also why it is so much in everyone's self-interest to prevent the French from frustrating the Americans so much that it brings about a disastrous weakening of the United Nations.

Gwyn Prins is Alliance Research Professor of the London School of Economics and Columbia University, New York, and author of 'The Heart of War: On Power, Conflict and Obligation in the 21st Century' (Routledge)