FROG MARCH

Marching orders from Paris (Michel Gurfinkiel, May. 28, 2003, Jerusalem Post)

English-speaking pundits may or may not have noticed, but the road map for an Israeli-Palestinian peace is being rendered into French as a feuille de route "travel warrant." A very awkward translation, indeed.

A road map is just a map. It shows you destinations and distances, but whether you travel, and in what direction, depends on you alone.

A travel warrant, however, is a binding document. When a soldier gets one, he must go no matter how he feels about it, and he must not deviate from the route. Of course, the semantic shift from "road map" to feuille de route is not accidental.

The French use this rather incorrect translation because their media use it. Their media, in turn, are just parrotting the term coined by the state-run news agency, AFP. [...]

The problem is that the feuille de route concept is gaining ground even when Americans use the term "road map."

The original peace plan outlined by George W. Bush last June was a remarkably balanced proposal that provided for an independent Palestinian state but made it conditional on the rule of law, an end to terror, and no-nonsense security guarantees for Israel.

But the June speech was surreptitiously rewritten by the Quartet, comprised of the US State Department, the UN, EU bureaucrats, and the Russian foreign office. It comes as no surprise that most of the Quartet participants are anxious to assert their own transnational or national standing and, like the French, relish imposing a peace settlement.

It is all too predictable that the same UN, EU, and Russia that were lukewarm or hostile toward US policy in Iraq will not care too much about Bush's intentions regarding Israel and Palestine. It is logical that players who were unsympathetic to Israel over many years will continue to be unsympathetic. Nevertheless, the Quartet lumbers on, with US sufferance, and is gradually being seen as the ultimate peace marshall something it is not and can never be.

It is time for America to worry about words, and what words may hide.

There's never a bad reason to bash the French, but it's a mistake to take the specifics of the road map to seriously. All that matters in the end is that it got the process going again and it leads to a Palestinian state. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 29, 2003 3:16 PM