Summary
The Roadmap prepared by the Quartet — representatives of the United States of America, the European Union, the Russian Federation and the United Nations — presented to the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority on 30 April 2003 and transmitted to the Security Council by Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s letter of 7 May 2003 (S/2003/529): a performance-based, goal-driven plan in three phases aiming at a final and comprehensive settlement by 2005, in which Phase I (present to May 2003) ends terror and violence, normalizes Palestinian life and builds Palestinian institutions, with an unconditional Palestinian cessation of violence, resumed Tenet-based security cooperation, comprehensive Palestinian political reform, progressive IDF withdrawal from areas occupied since September 28, 2000 and an Israeli freeze of all settlement activity consistent with the Mitchell Report; Phase II (June-December 2003) is a transition to the option of an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders; and Phase III (2004-2005) aims at a permanent status agreement ending the occupation that began in 1967, including an agreed, just, fair and realistic solution to the refugee issue and a negotiated resolution on Jerusalem, with progress between phases dependent on the parties’ compliance and the Quartet’s consensus judgment (A Performance-Based Road Map to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Quartet, transmitted 7 May 2003), PDF p.1-8).
What the file is
United Nations document S/2003/529, Security Council, Distr.: General, 7 May 2003, Original: English, 8 PDF pages, about 2,370 words in the text copy: Annan’s one-page covering letter (PDF p.1) and the Roadmap as its annex (PDF p.2-8, printed p.2-8). The original is a scanned image with no text layer; the supplied text copy is OCR of it and garbles scattered characters — the document symbol appears in three garbled forms for S/2003/529, “GOI” appears as “GO!” and “GOl”, the Phase III heading as “PHASE ITI”, and “reach” as “reaeh” at PDF p.8. The original was checked at PDF p.1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 8, where the printed text reads the passages used here cleanly; quotations are given as printed in the original where the OCR garbles them. The Roadmap itself carries no signature block; Annan’s letter is signed.
Section by section
- Covering letter (PDF p.1). Annan transmits the road map text “to realize the vision of two States, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security, as affirmed in Security Council resolution 1397 (2002)”; the text was prepared by the Quartet as defined in the Summary and presented to the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority on 30 April 2003; he asks that it be brought to the Council members’ attention.
- Annex, preamble (PDF p.2). The roadmap’s character, destination by 2005, conditions, mechanism, conditionality, settlement description and monitoring, as recorded in the reading notes: the destination is presented as in President Bush’s speech of 24 June (year not given) and welcomed by the EU, Russia and the UN in the 16 July and 17 September Quartet Ministerial statements; the settlement is based on the foundations of the Madrid Conference, the principle of land for peace, UNSCRs 242, 338 and 1397, agreements previously reached by the parties, and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah’s initiative endorsed by the Beirut Arab League Summit; the parties are expected to perform their obligations in parallel unless otherwise indicated.
- Phase I — Ending terror and violence, normalizing Palestinian life, and building Palestinian institutions, present to May 2003 (PDF p.3-5). Overview, opening reciprocal leadership statements, Security, Palestinian institution-building, Humanitarian response (Bertini report recommendations, AHLC, revenue clearance), Civil society, and Settlements — GOI immediately dismantles settlement outposts erected since March 2001 and freezes all settlement activity including natural growth — each item as recorded in the reading notes.
- Phase II — Transition, June 2003-December 2003 (PDF p.6-7). The option of an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and attributes of sovereignty, based on the new constitution, as a way station to a permanent status settlement; entry by the Quartet’s consensus judgment; an international conference convened by the Quartet immediately after Palestinian elections; Arab states restore pre-intifada links to Israel; revival of multilateral engagement; finalized constitution, formally established prime minister’s office, continued security performance, creation of the provisional-borders state with maximum territorial contiguity and further action on settlements, enhanced Quartet monitoring, and Quartet promotion of international recognition including possible UN membership.
- Phase III — Permanent status agreement and end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 2004-2005 (PDF p.7-8). Entry by the Quartet’s consensus judgment; a second international conference at the beginning of 2004 to endorse the provisional-borders agreement and launch the process to a final resolution in 2005 including borders, Jerusalem, refugees and settlements, and to support a comprehensive settlement with Lebanon and Syria; continued reform and security performance; and the closing items: the parties reach a final agreement as described in the Summary’s Phase III terms, and Arab state acceptance of full normal relations with Israel and security for all states of the region in the context of a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace.
Key passages
- “The following is a performance-based and goal-driven roadmap, with clear phases, timelines, target dates, and benchmarks aiming at progress through reciprocal steps by the two parties in the political, security, economic, humanitarian, and institution-building fields, under the auspices of the Quartet” (annex preamble, PDF p.2)
- “The settlement will resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and end the occupation that began in 1967, based on the foundations of the Madrid Conference, the principle of land for peace, UNSCRs 242, 338 and 1397” (annex preamble, PDF p.2)
- “Consistent with the Mitchell Report, GOI freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)” (Phase I, Settlements, PDF p.5)
- “Non-compliance with obligations will impede progress” (annex preamble, PDF p.2)
Evidence the work relies on
A plan, not an evidentiary work. Its stated foundations are the Madrid Conference, the principle of land for peace, UNSCRs 242, 338 and 1397, agreements previously reached by the parties and the Abdullah initiative; its operative building blocks are instruments it incorporates by reference — the Tenet work plan (security cooperation), the Mitchell Report (settlement freeze), the Bertini report (humanitarian recommendations), the International Task Force on Palestinian Reform benchmarks, and President Bush’s 24 June speech and the 16 July and 17 September Quartet Ministerial statements for its destination. None of those texts is reproduced in the file.
Analysis
The Roadmap’s mechanism is performance, not dates: each phase carries a calendar range, but entry into Phases II and III rests on the Quartet’s consensus judgment of both parties’ performance, and the preamble states that non-compliance will impede progress, so the 2005 destination is a goal the plan’s own terms make conditional. Its obligations are formally parallel and reciprocal, but their content is asymmetric in kind: the Palestinian items are chiefly security operations against named internal targets (arrest, disruption, confiscation of illegal weapons, dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure, consolidation of all security organizations into three services) and constitutional-institutional reform (draft constitution, empowered prime minister, election commission, Single Treasury Account), while the Israeli items are chiefly withdrawals, a settlement freeze and outpost dismantlement, facilitation of Palestinian officials’ travel and elections, and humanitarian easing. Final-status substance is deferred to Phase III and stated only as headings — borders, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements — with the refugee term fixed as “an agreed, just, fair, and realistic solution” and Jerusalem as a negotiated resolution taking both sides’ political and religious concerns into account. The plan gives the Quartet three roles — author, facilitator and judge of performance — and gives no enforcement step beyond monitoring and that judgment.
People, organizations, places and events
Quartet, Quartet Roadmap, Kofi Annan, UN Security Council Resolution 1397, UN Security Council Resolution 242, UN Security Council Resolution 338, Tenet Plan, Report of the Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee, Palestinian Authority, Israel Defense Forces, Madrid Conference, Arab Peace Initiative, City of Jerusalem
Concepts
Two-state solution, Land for peace
How it relates to other sources
This is the primary text of the Roadmap, not previously held as a source in the wiki; earlier pages mention the Roadmap and the Quartet only in other works’ accounts — Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope records, on the Oslo Accords page, that the Oslo framework, the Roadmap and the Quartet have provided the ground rules for diplomacy for twenty years — which this text now anchors. It operationalizes Resolution 1397 (2002) (12 March 2002)‘s vision, which its covering letter expressly invokes, builds Phase I security cooperation on The Tenet Plan: Israeli-Palestinian Ceasefire and Security Plan and its settlement freeze on Report of the Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee, and takes the Abdullah initiative adopted in Arab Peace Initiative and Beirut Declaration (Beirut summit, 27-28 March 2002) as one of its foundations, restating that initiative in the preamble’s narrower form — acceptance of Israel as a neighbor in the context of a comprehensive settlement — without the Beirut text’s withdrawal, refugee and capital terms. Resolution 1515 (2003) endorsing the Quartet Roadmap (19 November 2003) endorses this document by its symbol, S/2003/529, and calls on the parties to fulfil their obligations under it.
Open questions
- President Bush’s speech is dated only “24 June”, with no year, and the Quartet Ministerial statements only “16 July and 17 September”, with no years, in the file; their identification with 2002 rests on the plan’s April-May 2003 presentation, not on a year printed in the text.
- The Bertini report, the International Task Force on Palestinian Reform and AHLC are named without expansion or citation in the file; AHLC’s full name is not given.
- Phase I is headed “PRESENT TO MAY 2003” although the text was presented on 30 April 2003 and transmitted on 7 May 2003, so almost all of its stated window had elapsed on transmission; the file gives no explanation.
- The text copy’s OCR garbles noted in the What the file is section were resolved against the original at PDF p.1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 8; pages 3 and 7 were read from the text copy, whose wording there is coherent apart from the “GOI” character garbles.
Coverage
PDF p.1-8 of 8, read in full.