Let us first examine the background of the American-backed road map. The United States has proven over the years, and never so much as under the current Bush administration, that it is a meek dog that is wagged by its tail Israel. The US has tried its hand at breaking this explosive impasse, but always on terms favorable to Israel. Because of its intensely blazing love affair with an intransigent Israel and its utterly cold disregard for justice for the helpless Palestinians, the US attempts to settle this problem have met with resounding failures over too many bloodstained years.

Not much evidence is required to demonstrate the passionate attachment of the United States to Israel. On the one hand, US-funded and armed Israel, which has brought death and ruin in the region for over five decades and is bristling with weapons of mass destruction, is considered above the law and its Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is called “a man of peace” by President Bush, though most of the world regards Sharon as a war criminal. On the other hand, for domestic and electoral considerations, the US president and congressional representatives every day look shamelessly the other way as Israel, in violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions, mostly brutalizes, injures and murders innocent Palestinian toddlers, children, old men and pitiable women. It also confiscates the lands and properties of the occupied Palestinians, demolishes their houses, diverts their water resources, uproots their trees, and blocks their roads. The US administration’s and legislators’ utter disregard for the desolated humanity of the Palestinians reminds the observer of the infamous time when the civilized world turned a blind eye to the crimes committed by Nazi Germany.

The road map — the putative progenitors of which also include the European Union, Russia and the United Nations — is largely the offspring of pro-Zionist Jews in the US administration and neoconservative think tanks in Washington working together with the Israelis. In fact, most US ideas for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian deadlock are really Israeli-Zionist ideas, clumsily and transparently wrapped by the Americans. The implementation of this essentially flawed map will be completely at the mercy of the Israelis, past masters of never-ending negotiations, deceitful interpretations, guileful procrastination, and faits accomplis brought about by brute force.

Even before this much-hyped road map was announced, the Palestinians had to have a regime change, with a Palestinian Authority that was acceptable to Israel and the United States. This is a first in history. The United States and Israel jointly impose on the Palestinians the team that is to negotiate with Israel! But conveniently for Israel, there is no mechanism to enforce the map. Still, even this unpromising map is likely to be torpedoed by the majority of the Israelis, who have neither the intention nor the motivation to see it succeed, primarily because they have to disgorge Palestinian lands that Israel has illegally grabbed for several decades. However, without Israel’s withdrawal from all Palestinian territories occupied by force and in violation of international law there will never be peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Hence the hope that even this one-sided Israeli-American road map will be fulfilled requires a suspension of reason.

The world can nevertheless still hope for a realistic solution. Another road map already exists which, if supported by the United States and others, will bring peace to all parties. After unsuccessfully trying other solutions for many years, it is time now to breathe new life into the old road map which has delineated clearly the path to an equitable and fair solution to this issue. This plan requires the immediate implementation of previous UN resolutions which, incidentally, have, years ago, been accepted and endorsed by all Security Council members, including the US. Why do we allow Israel to bypass, dilute and flout UN resolutions? And why does the international community let a partisan United States come up with the preposterous idea of solving a chronic problem through negotiations between two unequal parties?

The US has made the United Nations irrelevant to the solution of this problem by assuming and monopolizing the role of “honest broker.” The US government and its political leadership have by their passionate partisanship in this conflict proved themselves unfit to act as an honest broker. We now need a solution based on justice as mandated by the United Nations and not as mediated by a proven and failed dishonest broker. As long as a dishonest broker is mediating this conflict, there will be no justice. Without justice, there will never be peace.

The world community should pluck up the courage to ring down the curtain on the farce that is the Israeli-American road map. It is time for realism. It is time to free Middle East peace plans from being held hostage to US domestic politics. It is time for the international community to dust off and immediately implement the old road map, the only one that will bring permanent peace, justice, security and the rule of law to all the peoples of this strife-torn region.

— Ismail Ibrahim Nawwab is a former university professor and general manager at Saudi Aramco. He is co-editor of the forthcoming “The Foundations of Islam.” The latest of his publications germane to this article is a paper entitled “Muslims and the West in History.” E-Mail: gratefulthrice@yahoo.com