THE ROADMAP: ONE REST STOP AT A TIME

It is far too early to tell whether the recent flurry of diplomatic activity in the Israeli-Arab conflict will result in anything more than an ephemeral breakthrough, despite the metaphorical genius of the Roadmap. The reason for this has little to do with doubts about the current U.S. administration's committment to its initiative, or with Sharon's remarkable gifts for misdirection. At a more fundamental level, the Roadmap is not dead on arrival, ala previous post-Oslo plans (Mitchell, Tenet) because critical steps towards Palestinian reform have happened. The potential for the Roadmap to fizze out like its predecessors remains because that reform was only half-complete. A fully empowered trio of Fayyad controlling the purse strings, Dahlan the security forces and Abbas the politics of the PA is the elusive Palestinain partner Israel has been searching for since the Oslo disaster. This trio, however, at present can not even wrest authority of the PA away from Arafat, let alone eliminate the rejectionist opposition of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the militant wing of Fatah.

This is why it comes as no surprise that Abbas is spearheading the drive for a global cease-fire. Abbas can not match Hamas and Arafat's appeal to the Palestinian's self-destructive passion for ideological purity. He can only build his constituency by delivering concrete, material improvements in the day-to-day conditions of Palestinian life. For this to happen, Abbas needs an Israeli withdrawl. And for that to happen, he needs Hamas to agree to a hudna, because until Dahlan is able to wrest control of the PA's security forces completely from the grasp of Arafat, Abbas lacks the capability of cracking down on Hamas in the wake of a terror attack. This is reason why Israel will swallow the bitter pill of one more Palestinian "unity" pact - with the implicit understanding that such a move will be permitted in Abbas' grace period, but not if it becomes a cornerstone of Abbas' policy.

If Abbas is sucessful at achieving a time-out, Israel will carry out the relatively painless steps required of it in the first phase of the road map. Sharon is firmly ensconsed in the center of Israeli opinion - and the election of Peres as interim Labor leader assures him of the cushion of a unity government in the event of the inevitable exodus of his hard-line coalition partners. Sharon would be wise to use the cease-fire in another way, to complete as much of the West Bank fence as possible. Because whether or not Abbas is able to outmaneuver Arafat in the next coming months, the genocidal mullahs of Hamas will decide to launch another wave of terror attacks. That problem, however, doesn't be addressed until the next rest stop on the Roadmap. After all, even if we don't have peace, we do have a metaphor.