Like a ghost lurking in the background, the Israel-Palestinian conflict haunts the Iraq war. That ghost is about to emerge onto center stage.

Just before the start of the Iraq war, President Bush said he envisioned a Palestinian state side by side with Israel. He’s said similar things before but shown little interest in follow-through. Yet this time he said he was “personally committed” to a diplomatic “road map” that would lead to a Palestinian state by 2005.

What is the road map? For months the president has refused to reveal details, but some have leaked. In the first stage, Palestinians must reform their government and make convincing progress in halting violence, while Israel must freeze all settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza.

But now it is no longer possible to hide the map, which was drafted by a “Quartet”: the United States, Russia, the European Union and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. New Mideast developments will force the president to reveal it and his intentions toward it very soon.

The first new development has to do with the Palestinians. The administration had pledged that, when the Palestinians chose new leadership, the road map would be made public. Now Yasser Arafat has reluctantly, under pressure from his own people, chosen a prime minister who has the potential to end the violence — with U.S. help.

Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, has long been committed to the peace process and often disagreed with Arafat about how to conduct it. The first time I interviewed him, in Damascus in 1979, he told me how he had tried and failed to get Arafat to attend the 1977 Mena House conference in Cairo. At that conference, Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat — fresh from his historic Jerusalem visit — had secured the Palestinians a seat at the table with Israel.

Had the Palestinians shown up, they might long since have had a state, as they might also have had from the Oslo process if Arafat hadn’t opted for violence in late 2000. Even now, Abu Mazen represents a new chance, perhaps the last chance, before ongoing Israel-Palestinian war destroys all prospect for a two-state solution.

If that prospect dies, the result will be disaster for the Palestinians and for Israel, and a debacle for U.S. policy in the region. Israel will be left in permanent control of 3.2 million Palestinians, a situation requiring permanent military occupation. Given demographic trends, the Jews will soon become a minority in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The only victors will be the Islamists and the terrorist recruiters. In such circumstances, Saddam’s demise will have little impact on the number of Palestinian volunteers. So the president must help Abu Mazen succeed. But the new Palestinian leader doesn’t have a prayer unless the administration commits to making the road map work.

The second development that makes releasing the road map so urgent is the onset of the Iraq war. As U.S. troops near Baghdad, the road map holds the key to the President’s goals.

Bush has said a “liberated Iraq” would “show the power of freedom to transform” the Middle East. Democracy in Baghdad is supposed to promote similar change throughout the region. This, in turn, will allegedly undercut terrorism’s lure for disaffected Arab youth. Anyone who believes these claims is blind to what is going on in the Arab world.

Arab publics believe that the United States is invading Iraq for oil and to make the Middle East safe for Israel. Nothing will change these perceptions short of some progress on the Israel-Palestinian issue. If the Palestinian issue festers, Arab youths will equate any U.S. role in Baghdad with Israeli occupation of the West Bank. This will drive them toward Islamism, not democracy.

Which brings us back to the road map. The road to Jerusalem peace could run through Baghdad, but only if the president presses both Palestinians and Israelis to follow the map. If Bush doesn’t do so, the road to Baghdad — and Jerusalem — will lead to a dead end.

.