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Roadmap,” insisting – even after Sharon was long gone from government – that the phrase be repeated by American officials. The sequence was first an end to terror, then Palestinian reform and the departure from power of Arafat, and only then the negotiations that would lead to Palestinian statehood. The Israelis said they would not talk and fight at the same time, and they relied on the Roadmap in refusing to do so.
    In this December 2002 speech, Sharon specified that Arafat would no longer be the head of the Palestinian executive branch, and the security organizations (“the majority of which,” Sharon noted, “are in fact involved in terror”) would be dismantled and replaced with new organizations under an empowered minister of the interior, over whom Arafat would have no control. A new minister of finance would also be appointed, “taking the financial system out of Arafat's hands.” A reformed judicial system would punish terrorists. After that, and only after that, should Palestinian elections take place:
The elections in the Palestinian Authority should be held only at the conclusion of the reform process and after proper governmental regulations have been internalized. The goal is that these will be true elections – free, liberated and democratic.

    But Sharon made clear his decision to go forward:
The second phase of President Bush's sequence proposes the establishment of a Palestinian state.…As I have promised in the past, President Bush's sequence will be discussed and approved by the National Unity Government which I intend to establish after the elections.…I have said it before, and will say it again today: Israel is prepared to make painful concessions for a true peace.…These decisions are not easy for me, and I cannot deny that I have doubts, reservations and fears; however, I have come to the conclusion that in the present regional and international reality Israel must act with courage to accept the political plan which I described.

Arafat andthe Roadmap: Elections Next Year?
    On the Palestinian side, on July 12 Arafat had written to Powell to reiterate his commitment to reform. From an American perspective, these were just more Arafat lies, but Arafat was also responding to internal Palestinian pressures to reform. Powell met on August 8 with the PLO peace negotiator Saeb Erekat andother Palestinian leaders to discuss the reforms and elections that the Roadmap demanded. On September 11, Arafat's entire cabinet resigned; one effect of the Roadmap discussions had been to stir up Palestinian politics, and there was a showdown between Arafat and the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). The Washington Post called this incident “the stiffest internal challenge yet to his leadership. The Palestinian Legislative Council, which often has been at odds with Arafat, was only minutes away from a showdown vote against Arafat's cabinet.” 10 A no-confidence vote in the PLC was imminent had Arafat not blinked because legislators were refusing to confirm a cabinet full of Arafat cronies renowned for corruption. Moreover, the demands President Bush was making for an end to Arafat's political monopoly and the establishment of a new and more democratic political system were reverberating: “[T]his week's upheaval shows that an increasing number of Palestinian politicians are demanding the creation of prime minister as an elected office,” the Christian Science Monitor reported. 11 Terms like accountability and separation of powers were now being heard in Ramallah, for Bush had in fact judged the Palestinian political situation more accurately than his supposedly more sophisticated critics.
    For Washington, these debates in Ramallah were all positive signs, revealing that there were Palestinians willing to stand up to Arafat and showing that U.S. accusations of his corruption and one-man rule were echoed by many who lived under his thumb – and wanted a government that was decent and democratic.