taboo. It proves that settlements can be removed; it creates a pattern, a precedent.
The Roadmap does not say where the permanent borders between Israel and Palestine will be. That will be the issue for the next battle.
But we are moving forward. Perhaps only a small step. Perhaps a bigger one than it seems. But even in the most pessimistic view, this is a move in the right direction, towards the end of the occupation, towards peace.
Pray for the Roadmap. This is the traditional "Prayer for the Road" for Jews who set out on a voyage (my translation):
May it please you, our God and our fathers' God,
To show us the way to peace,
And to guide our steps towards this peace,
And to direct our traveling in peace,
That we may complete out journey to life, joy, and peace,
And be safeguarded from all enemies and dangers along the way, And from all the disasters native to this world ...
October 19, 2003
The Beilin-Abed-Rabbo agreement is the latest hit on the Middle Eastern market.58
This week I made a short visit to Germany, where a book of mine has come out, and was asked about the agreement at every event. At my meetings with President Johannes Rau and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, too, the subject came up at once. I used the opportunity to argue for support of this initiative by all possible means.
To avoid misunderstanding, I pointed out that I have no connections with this initiative. The Israeli participants belong to the left wing of the Labor and Meretz parties, and I do not belong to this circle. But I give this initiative all my blessings-all the more so because it continues a process that we ourselves started two years ago.
In August 2001, Gush Shalom published the draft of an
Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. It consisted of 14 paragraphs that included detailed proposals for the solution of all the problems of the conflict. It was an Israeli initiative, but we acted in close consultation with Palestinian colleagues.
The main object of the initiative was educational. The al-Aqsa Intifada was in full swing, Ehud Barak's myth ("There is no one to talk