Delaying the peace plan may help Palestine's new leader

That Road map is still lost in the glove compartment of the US President's limousine. George Bush promised on 14 March, on the eve of war in Iraq, that he would give it to the Israelis and the Palestinians as soon as a new prime minister of the Palestinian Authority was appointed.

By that time, five days later, the condition had mysteriously changed. It was no longer enough for Abu Mazen, the kind of ex-militant the US can do business with, to accept the invitation to serve as prime minister. Now he had to be "confirmed". Then he had to appoint his cabinet. And that turned out to be the cue for a full-dress power struggle – still unresolved – between Mr Mazen and Yasser Arafat, the President of the Palestinian proto-state. The kicking of Mr Arafat upstairs to the Ramallah equivalent of the House of Lords was, of course, the real precondition of progress.

None of this means, necessarily, that Tony Blair has failed in his attempt to persuade George Bush to devote as much effort to Israel-Palestine as he did to Iraq. Or that President Bush was insincere in the promise that he made more than a month ago. It may well be that Mr Mazen himself wanted to delay the launch of the road-map so that he could use it as leverage in his struggle to assert his independence from Mr Arafat.

In any case, the fact of the power struggle within the Palestinian leadership is, paradoxically, a hopeful sign. The resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process requires painful concessions from both sides. For the Palestinians as much as the Israelis that needs a change of heart among their leadership, and that in turn demands a real shift in power.

Mr Arafat has not served the Palestinian cause well; he has failed to make creative use of the many opportunities offered him since the Oslo accords in 1993.

It may be that Mr Mazen is too compromised by his very acceptability to the US and to Israel to be able to win the Palestinian people round to non-violent means of securing a better future. But it is essential that he be given the chance to try, and if that means we have to wait a little longer for the road-map, the world can wait.