The "Performance-Based Road Map to a Permanent Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" proved to be leading in the direction of more violence during June, not toward the touted "enduring peace" that its advocates projected. World leaders, including American President George Bush, seemed taken aback by the fresh river of blood that flowed in the Road Map's wake. Given that every previous "land for peace" plan had led to sharp escalations in both Israeli and Palestinian death tolls, international leaders should have anticipated the renewed bloodbath that followed the plan's formal introduction at the end of April.

The world's diplomats and leaders seem to have learned precious little from the failed Oslo peace process, which collapsed in an explosion of fire in September, 2000. They have apparently failed to absorb the obvious truth that a substantial portion of the Palestinian people and their regional allies utterly reject a "two-state solution" to the burning conflict. Such a rejection, based mainly on Islamic teachings and principals, will not simply disappear because a new batch of world leaders--George Bush, Tony Blair, Kofi Anan and Vladimir Putin--have replaced the original supporting cast of Bill Clinton, John Major, Perez de Qualiar and Boris Yeltsin.

The most dubious contention that has been bandied about in support of the new Road Map peace attempt is that the quick and decisive American-led victory over Saddam would somehow produce an instantly reformed--or at least adequately frightened--Arab Middle East that would bow in humble submission to the fresh peace attempt. Such a proposition totally ignores, or at best vastly underrates, the enduring strength and fervor of Islamic antipathy over the existence of a Jewish state anywhere in the mainly Muslim Middle East.

Whether Israel is a small country that encompasses the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Judea and Samaria, or a tiny land without these areas, as envisioned in the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan, is of little importance to many regional Muslims. This is especially so for the many thousands who support the radical Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Al Aksa Martyr's Brigades Palestinian groups, along with the Shiite Hizbullah militia in southern Lebanon. Saddam's swift and dramatic fall from power will hardly persuade such dedicated militants to beat their cherished Islamic swords into ploughshares, particularly since the brutal Iraqi dictator was seen by most of them as a backslidden Muslim at best.

SUMMIT IN JORDAN

Ignoring the shaky platform for launching a new Middle East peace initiative, American President George Bush traveled to the region in early June to place his official White House seal of approval on the Road Map plan. He met on June 4 with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, in the southern Jordanian resort city of Akaba. As his Secretary of State had done just a few weeks before him, the US leader pledged full American support for a comprehensive peace settlement by the end of 2005. He made clear to the Israeli and Palestinian leaders that he was "personally committed" to such an outcome, and would pursue it with forceful determination, despite "expected obstacles" along the road.

The Israeli leader repeated that a full cessation of Palestinian violence was an absolute requirement for the new peace process to succeed. But he also pledged again his willingness to make "painful concessions" for the sake of real peace, if the other side is truly willing to take the necessary steps to halt the violence and live in peace with Israel. This is widely interpreted to mean a near total abandonment of over 200 Jewish communities that have sprung up in the contested territories since the areas were captured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War.

Mahmoud Abbas said the magic words required of him under the Road Map formula. He pledged to stop all terrorist assaults on Jewish targets, and to "work for a peaceful solution to all outstanding issues" that divide Israelis and Palestinians. However, he repeated the long-held PLO demand that Palestinian refugees require a "just resolution" of their problems, which was interpreted to mean the so-called "right to return" to family homes inside of Israel's pre-1968 borders.

Abbas also stressed that the "unity" of the Palestinian people was of uproots importance to him, which was seen as an early admission that he was not prepared to use force to disarm the radical rejectionist groups. Abbas later said in plain language that he would only engage in "dialogue" with the extremists, which was viewed by Israeli officials as an early sign that the new peace program would not move forward unless IDF forces were allowed by the international community to militarily dismantle the radical groups.

PEACE...

In the Bible, we are informed that the human chorus of "peace! peace!" is often a signal for sudden destruction to descend upon the Lord's special land. Indeed, the highly celebrated Oslo peace accord signing in September, 1993 did not at all mark the beginning of an era of docile tranquility in Israel, but set off a sharp escalation of terrorist violence that produced a three-fold increase in Israeli civilian casualties.

In a similar fashion, the Akaba summit was followed by the worst explosion of violence since the March, 2002 splurge of terrorist atrocities that sparked off a major Israeli military campaign. It began just four days later, when a group of Israeli reserve soldiers was ambushed while on foot patrol in the Gaza Strip. Four men were killed in the early morning assault, and several others were wounded. Most ominously, responsibility for the attack was later claimed by the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyr's Brigades terrorist groups, signaling their joint determination to wreck the Road Map process in its early stages.

Hamas spokesman Abdel Aziz Rantisi went on Palestinian television to take "credit" for the unprovoked attack, vowing that the joint operation was just the first of many designed to crush the new peace process. He repeated earlier Hamas statements that the militants--who are supported by a substantial portion of the Palestinian people, and by such regional states as Syria and Iran--would never lay down their weapons and accept a Jewish state living side by side in peace with a Palestinian one. He warned that Hamas militants and their Islamic comrades would violently oppose any attempt to disarm them by the Palestinian Authority, or to restrict in any way their "just jihad struggle" against the Zionist enemy.

...AND HYPOCRACY

Israel quickly responded to Rantisi's latest rantings by firing a rocket on his car as it was traveling in Gaza City. However, the June 10 attack only wounded the Hamas spokesman, along with his son, while killing his driver and a woman walking nearby. Rantisi, who had earlier condemned the American-led war on Iraq as "naked aggression" and called for the assassination of George Bush and Tony Blair, later denounced the attack from his hospital bed and wowed "swift revenge." The White House responded by announcing that President Bush was "deeply troubled" by the Israeli attempt to eliminate the vile Hamas official.

The Israeli government and public was stunned by the American reaction, given that it was clearly Hamas and its radical allies that were openly declaring holy war on the Road Map peace plan. Many commentators bitterly recalled Bush's widely reported statement after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York and Washington that "a terrorist is a terrorist, no matter what their cause," and his pledge to seek out and destroy such evildoers with all of America's armed military might.

Many Israeli leaders and analysts have been cogently arguing since the mid-1990s that there is no chance for a permanent solution to the deeply entrenched Palestinian-Israeli conflict until all terrorist groups are militarily neutralized. While it is certainly true that a "military solution" alone cannot resolve the overall conflict, it must certainly be an important component of such a solution--unless a miracle takes place and such groups voluntarily end their religious-based jihad war, or are forced to do so by Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Given that such things are about as likely as hell freezing over, only strong Israeli military action, or an unexpected American and/or European operation, stands any real chance of weakening the militants to the point where they are no longer able to wreck all attempts to peacefully end the conflict.

DEATH IN JERUSALEM

It was just over 24 hours later when Hamas kept its wicked pledge to slaughter more innocent Israeli civilians. A public bus was instantly transformed into burning fire and twisted metal after a Hamas terrorist, deceptively dressed as an Orthodox Jew, boarded the vehicle on Jaffa Road and set off his deadly explosive charge. A total of 17 people were murdered, including a local Arab passenger, and over 100 others were injured. Many others who were innocently standing close-by, like American Ron Cantrell who volunteers with the Jerusalem-based international Christian group Bridges for Peace, were not physically wounded, but sustained powerful emotional scars that will remain with them for some time at least. After walking in shock to his home some distance away, Cantrell's family were sickened to find parts of human flesh clinging to the back of his shirt.

Israeli leaders responded to the outrageous and deliberate slaughter of innocents, a majority of them women, by carrying out several attacks upon Hamas targets. This time, the White House did not condemn the justified Israeli response. Reacting to earlier widespread American congressional and public criticism of the President's stand, Bush changed his tune considerably by calling upon all those who want lasting peace in the Middle East to "deal harshly" with Hamas militants. The usually neutral European Union echoed this sentiment, with EU Mideast envoy Miguel Moratinos and other diplomats strongly condemning the Hamas bus attack. One week later, visiting American Secretary of State Colin Powell said at a joint news conference with Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem that all must "punch through the obstacles" posed by Hamas in order to "overwhelm" the group. This was interpreted by many Israeli analysts as a green light for Sharon to carry on with military strikes against the rejectionist group and its allies.

Such "targeted assaults" on Hamas leaders and activists were carried out later in June, especially after another terror attack left an Israeli grocer dead in the Jordan Valley. He was blown to bits after detecting a homicide terrorist hiding in his store, which officials said probably prevented a much greater tragedy if the attacker had been able to carry out his apparent plan to board a crowded civilian bus near the store. A few days later, an American-born Israeli man was shot dead on a road north of Jerusalem while on his way to a wedding party for his son, who was only married the night before. The man's visiting American parents were seriously wounded in the armed ambush.

Despite the attacks, Sharon continued to carry out his pledge to begin dismantling illegal Jewish outposts in Judea and Samaria. The move was strongly opposed by many of his Likud party colleagues, a few of whom vowed to topple the sitting PM. Over 1,000 soldiers were deployed on June 18 to forcibly dismantle the inhabited small settlement of Mitzpe Yitzhar, just south of the biblical town of Shechem--today's Nablus. The settlement was established after Palestinian gunmen overran the nearby sacred site of Joseph's Tomb in October 2000. Scores of Jews protested the evacuation, and several arrests were made. Analysts warned that much more violent resistance can be expected if Sharon goes ahead with his pledge to dismantle many other larger communities in the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria, in preparation for a Palestinian state to emerge in the area.

Meanwhile, the political reigns of the rival Labor party once again fell into the hands of peace process advocate Shimon Peres, who signaled that he might push for his party to join with Sharon in forming another National Unity coalition government. Such a move might insure that the Road Map process moves forward despite the renewed Palestinian terrorist violence.

BACK IN THE LAND

There was one piece of good news that stood out during the dismal violence that June brought to the Lord's precious land, and it came from America. The US Central Bureau of Statistics reported that the number of Jews in America is now estimated to be 5.2 million. This came just weeks after the Israeli government reported that 5.4 million Jews now reside in Israel--meaning the largest single Jewish community on earth is now back in the land for the first time since the Roman dispersion nearly 2,000 years ago. However, some analysts pointed out that some of those counted in Israel as Jews are not Jewish according to Orthodox religious law, having a Jewish father or grandparent only for instance. Still, the same situation applies in America, say other analysts, meaning the number of Jews is still greatest in Israel. Meanwhile, Israeli government officials said the immigration rate is steadily dropping due to the continuing violence in the land.

Despite the Palestinian holy war against reborn Israel, may the Lord continue to return His chosen covenant Jewish people to the Promised Land in accordance with his many biblical promises, such as this one in Isaiah 11:12: "And He will lift up a standard for the nations, and will assemble the banished ones of Israel, and will gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth."