The road to reconciliation?

After only 21 days of war in Iraq, there are signs that the US is already turning its attention to another regional battle: the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

In recent days, administration officials have made clear that the US-backed "road map" peace plan will be unveiled this month and that its contents are nonnegotiable.

While the new push for peace is closely linked to the US efforts in Iraq as well as British and European political concerns, its greatest effect may be on Israeli domestic politics.

In the meantime, the parties involved differ on its impact on the region.

Palestinians, who feared what might happen during the war in Iraq, now look to benefit and say they are taking a wait-and-see attitude. Israel opposes the plan as it stands, arguing that the road map's renewed momentum is driven more by a US need to reward and placate others than any desire to foster peace.

"They're suspicious that the US and the European Union are trying to buy goodwill at Israel's expense," says Mark Heller, a senior research analyst at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies.

Many Israelis also believe that the US is acting out of a desire to reward.

"It's understood that [the road map] is part of a payment to the British in exchange for their support in Iraq," says Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv.

The road map came into being after a June 2002 speech by President George Bush, in which he outlined a series of measures meant to end violence here and lead to the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.

The actual work of making this happen fell to the Quartet - the US, the 15-member European Union, Russia and the United Nations - who banded together in the fall of 2001 to coordinate efforts to cultivate peace here.

Problems cropped up as soon as the teams sat down to translate Mr. Bush's idea into a workable written plan. Though the road map still has not been published - it is expected sometime this month, after the new Palestinian prime minister takes office - bits and pieces of its drafts were leaked to the media.

Israel objected to what it was hearing. In the first of three phases, the plan reportedly requires both sides to publicly commit to a two-state solution. Palestinians are required to end violence and incitement against Israel, crack down on terrorist groups, and undertake political reform, among other steps.

Israel is to stop confiscating and destroying Palestinian civilian property, allow Palestinian officials to travel for their reform efforts, improve the Palestinian humanitarian situation, dismantle illegal settlement outposts, and freeze all settlement activity.

The core problem with this plan, say Israelis, is that it asks both sides to take these steps together.

They say that Bush's June 2002 speech required Palestinians to take steps before any Israeli action would be required and insist that the road map follow that performance-based template rather than a timetable.

"What Bush outlined last year was essentially sequential and therefore conditional in the sense that there were certain obligations that the Palestinians had to meet first before demands would be made of Israel," says

Mr. Heller of the Jaffee Center. "Now there are concerns that [Israel has] obligations regardless of what the Palestinians do."

Foreign diplomats observing the process say that parallel requirements are a core part of the road map, but that this doesn't encompass all elements.

"Some aspects have to move a little more quickly than others," says one diplomat, referring to Palestinian violence.

Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian legislator, says the two sides have little choice. "The road map is the only game in town," he says. "The renewal of the peace effort is connected to it, so we see good things in it, it's about ending the occupation and providing peace and security for all parties."

Mr. Khatib complains that Palestinians have already proceeded with reforms and appointed a prime minister, but that Israel is dragging its heels. The plan itself is satisfactory, he says. "We have problems with some details but this is not fundamental," says Khatib.

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