It seems clear that the so-called "road map" has little chance of becoming reality. So much so that even ultra-hardliners like the Israeli defence minister, General Shaul Mofaz, voted on Sunday 25 May to "accept" this plan.
The question now is: who will be blamed for the failure?
After selling very successfully the myth of Ehud Barak's "generous offer" to Arafat in 2000, a rehash of the same plot is now being played out, and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) stands a good chance of losing the game
Still, why bother with all this theatre? Why is the Bush administration pushing Israel to "accept" this rotten plan?
Bush II might not be the most brilliant politician, but some of the people around him are certainly not fooled by the Israeli "yes".
A possible answer can be sought by considering the situation leading up to the Madrid Conference 12 years ago. It is clear that the most important factor for the then US administration (Bush I) to push Israel to participate in this conference was the desire to cash in on the Kuwait war, to finance what Business Week called at the time "Operation Desert Market".
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Germany, Japan, etc. where "gently" invited to pay the bill and the war dividend. Accordingly, a huge capital transfer to the US worth hundreds of billions of dollars took place.
As a kind of "return service", and in order to pacify the Saudis and other friends, the Israelis were brought to the table in Madrid.
But once the money started flowing, the US lost interest in the Madrid process, being aware that any "peace" in the Middle East will be a costly affair and will necessitate sharing a larger part of the loot with more countries, under the motto "give 'peace' a cheque".
This was also the reason why in 1993 Shimon Peres and his cohorts had to work so hard in order to convince a reluctant Clinton administration to support Oslo. The Americans were not very enthusiastic about financing this "peace" accord in the same manner as they paid for the Egyptian-Israeli treaty.
We now have a somewhat similar situation. The present Bush administration is looking to finance its Iraq adventure and its "anti-terror campaign".
As a first step, it has to stop the threatening massive Islamic/Arab capital drain from the US. In August 2002 the Financial Times claimed that, since 11 September 2001, the Saudis alone withdrew some 200 billion dollars from their investments in the US, estimated to be between 400 and 600 billion dollars.
It seems that the Bush II administration is pursuing a stick-and-carrot policy against the Saudis and their friends, in which the carrot includes the "road map" charade.
As for the stick, the message is that the capital drain has to be stopped and reversed, otherwise the Israelis will get the green light much sooner to complete the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, and a further milestone in the reshaping of the Middle East will take place.
* Shraga Elam is an Israeli investigative journalist based in Zurich and author of a highly-praised book in German on the collaboration of the Zionist leadership with the Nazis. The book, Hitlers Faelscher: wie juedische amerikanische und Schweizer Agenten der SS beim Falschgeldwaschen halfen [Hitler's Forgers: How Jewish, American and Swiss agents helped the SS with laundering faked money], is published by Uberreuter Verlag and can be purchased here.