The road map is doomed like all the previous peace plans (and they were many) for two reasons: the settlements and the separation wall or fence.

To know exactly what is Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s position on the settlements, the last thing to do is to use official pronouncements. Jewish publications are the right place to go. Columnist Douglas Bloomfied wrote the following in the Manhattan Jewish Sentinel of June 6-12, 2003: “Settlements were intended from the outset to be obstacles to Palestinian statehood. That comes from a man who should know: Ariel Sharon, who once told me that his goal was to scatter them so widely in the West Bank that it would be ‘impossible to draw lines’ for a Palestinian state.” No comment is needed; this quote speaks for itself.

The problem of the fence or the wall is not whether Israel has the right to build it. It has every right to do so but only on its own land. Israel, however, does what it does best: steal other people’s land for its own use. Furthermore, a fence built along the green line would be 300 km long (187 miles), but for political reasons, the fence will be as much as 500 km long (312 miles). As it is now planned, the fence will swallow a third of the West Bank to include almost all the settlements and all of the Jordan Valley.

The combination of the settlements and the fence makes a mockery of the road map.