The blood-soaked events of the past week are clear evidence that Mahmoud Abbas, the first Palestine prime minister, and his government cannot walk the road to the road map for a Middle East peace alone. They will need help from many quarters, foremost from Palestinians themselves.

Such support is not at all forthcoming, and for good reason. Palestinians had to bury 12 of their own following an Israeli raid in Gaza last week. Not surprisingly, there were chants against Abbas in the funeral procession. A bomb attack on a Tel Aviv café which killed three Israelis came a few days earlier, prompting a grim reminder of how difficult it will be for the road map and Abbas to succeed. On that very day, Abbas was sworn in with a promise to crack down on activists and work for the success of the new internationally backed Middle East peace plan.

Abbas is a critic of attacks against Israelis, and in his inaugural address as the Palestinian Authority’s new prime minister he pledged to control militant groups and illegal weapons. He rejected “terror on either side and in any form” and vowed to put an end to the “chaos of arms” in the Palestinian areas, an implicit warning to the various Palestinian militias that the “security pluralism” of the intifada must soon end. But Hamas is not listening, rejecting the road map outright and calling it “a plan to liquidate the Palestinian cause.”

Palestinian factions not ready to stop the intifada are not Abbas’ only problem. There is Israel which sees the road map as a draft, subject to change and revisions, this despite the pronouncements by several Quartet officials who drew up the plan that the road map is not a vague formula for negotiations and that not one word, not even a comma, will be changed.

The road map calls for an immediate cease-fire, a crackdown on Palestinian militants, an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian towns and the dismantling of Jewish settlements erected since 2001. The end result is the creation of a Palestinian state as early as 2005. But among the changes Israel wants introduced is that any Israeli withdrawal from the reoccupied Palestinian cities be conditional on PA action against militias and that any settlement freeze follow, rather than run parallel to, a Palestinian cease-fire. It also wants the Palestinian leadership to immediately renounce the Palestinian refugees’ right of return to their homes in what was Mandate Palestine but is now Israel.

This last demand is impossible to pursue. As for settlements, Israel is supposed to dismantle immediately the 70 or so outposts established in the West Bank since Ariel Sharon became prime minister in early 2001. But Sharon balks at the map’s demand for a comprehensive freeze on settlements. He knows that this could draw him into conflict not only with the far-right parties in his coalition government but also with his own Likud movement.

If this is the future of the road map, it is not going to work. The only way the new Palestinian government can end Palestinian armed attacks is in return for tangible achievements such as a withdrawal from the Palestinian cities, a real relaxation of Israel’s closure policies and a monitored settlement freeze. To act against Palestinian activists in the absence of such reciprocal Israeli measures is a road that Abbas cannot afford to take.