Caroline Glick has characterized as “garbled to the point of incoherence” Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s January 13 response on whether she was going to propose “new ideas to [Condoleezza Rice] in steps on the roadmap”:
And but yes, I do and I was not talking about jumping or skipping or bypassing some of the phases of the roadmap, but I do believe that talking with the Palestinians today what are the best steps that we can take and maybe to make some visions or some — what we say the political horizon more concrete if this can help, so this is something that we have to do. But there’s a difference and we can distinguish talking with the Palestinians and implementing parts one before the other, and I believe that this is the difference maybe and maybe the kind of misunderstanding that was in the understanding of talking or implementing the phases in a different order.
But Condoleezza Rice’s explanation was not much better. On January 15, Rice had this exchange with reporters, after saying she had held discussions with Olmert and Abbas on “a political horizon for the Palestinian people” and would be convening a meeting to talk about the “broad issues on the horizon”:
QUESTION: Madam Secretary . . . could you also explain what you specifically mean by this new buzzword "political horizon" and how that fits into the context of the road map?
SECRETARY RICE: . . . We were really going to try to help the parties come together to look at how they can move through the road map. And it’s very clear what we mean by "broader issues." We mean what would lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state. And there are a number of issues — some old, some new — that will ultimately have to be resolved if there is to be a Palestinian state. And I appreciate very much that Prime Minister Olmert and President Abbas, within the context of the road map, want to start that discussion. . . . It seems wise to begin this, as — what President Abbas has called an informal discussion, to just really sit and talk about the issues.
Compared to Livni’s imitation of Professor Irwin Corey, Rice’s answer at least parsed. But it had its own Coreyesque incoherence: helping the parties “move through the road map” by working on Phase III first, since final status issues will “ultimately have to be resolved,” so it’s just “wise” to start now — even though the roadmap expressly conditions discussion of them until after Phase I and II — and after Phase III the Palestinians will want to work on Phase I, so this reversal of the roadmap is “within the context of the road map.”
As Corey almost said, “If we don’t do Phase III first, we’ll never get to do Phase I and then skip Phase II.”