The 'road map' for the Middle East is unlikely to lead to peace as long as US President George W Bush allows Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to remain in the driver's seat.

Even before this road map was officially 'accepted' by the parties concerned, Sharon had persuaded Bush to delay its announcement three times, and attempted to sabotage it by proposing more than a dozen unreasonable amendments.

The reality is that Sharon does not want peace. What he wants instead is a 'Greater Israel' that encompasses all of Palestine. Peace and a Palestinian state would have denied him this intention.

Sharon has never made secret his aim to see the Palestinians driven over to Jordan, leaving their land behind solely for the Israelis. A few years ago, he made the sly and ominous comment that since Jordan already has a Palestinian majority, it is for all intents and purposes an existing Palestinian state.

Then, he had signalled his vision for the Israeli 'lebensraum'. Getting rid of the Palestinians from Palestine was to be his main objective.

The Israeli Kahan Commission investigating the Sabra and Shatila massacre recommended that the prime minister of Israel removes Sharon from his then position as defence minister.

Sharon had allowed his Phalangist allies to commit genocidal atrocities on Palestinians in those camps. Ironically, today he is the prime minister, and undoubtedly one of its most aggressive, if not the most aggressive.

On the 'eve' of a possible peace accord for Israel and the PLO brokered by former US President Bill Clinton, and to be signed by then Israeli PM Ehud Barak and the PLO leader Yasser Arafat, Sharon sabotaged the process by provoking the Arabs into an uncompromising frenzy, when he deliberately and provocatively loitered in the proximity of the Temple Mount. His aim was of course to prevent peace and the creation of a Palestine state.

As the Palestinians were manipulated by Sharon into the expected aggressive frenzy, he then cleverly exploited Israeli fear into an election victory for his own right-wing party, Likud, and its conservative political allies. He became the PM to ensure no peace process would succeed.

At every opportunity Sharon would blame the Palestinian authorities as the unwilling party to the 'road map', even as he continued to wreck the peace process and at the same time encouraged continuing Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.

He is conducting 'lebensraum' by stealth, square kilometre by square kilometre. He continues to deny to the Palestinians land that should have been returned because he does not have the intention of doing so.

The 9/11 attack and the recent US invasion of Iraq presented opportunities for a man like Sharon to perpetuate all sorts of terrorist actions against the Palestinians under the guise of anti-terrorism, knowing that Bush would readily support him. There is also the powerful American Jewish lobby to ensure that the US president will support Israel, come what may.

Sharon is well-known to be violent and brutal towards the Arabs, resorting to ugly tactics and atrocities that even more ironically for an Israeli/Jew, resemble those of the Nazis of World War II.

Visiting collective punitive punishment on innocent family members of PLO militants, squeezing alestinians into horrible ghettos and restricting their movement, marking Palestinian prisoners with a number on their arms (akin to tattooing), revenge killings, state-sponsored assassinations, and irresponsible bombings and attacks on areas where large civilian casualties would be unavoidable are his modus operandi.

His brutal directives and manner of state terrorism have been so appalling and repulsive that even a large number of Israeli Air Force pilots, the cream of its military, recently made an open declaration that they would no longer continue the inhuman bombings and attacks against innocent Palestinian civilians.

Additionally, more than 500 Israeli soldiers have already refused to serve in military action against the Palestinians. What more proof does one require of the brutality of Sharon's policies towards the Palestinians and the peace process?

It is regrettable that Bush continues to support this man who belongs in the same league as former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the typical Nazi SS general.

He has just made an air attack on Syria, a sovereign country, on the excuse that this state harbours the militant group responsible for the latest suicide bombing in Haifa. It released a videotape of an armoury in a location in Syria taken some years ago, as if this was evidence to support its claim for the aggression against Syria.

Sadly but not unexpectedly, the US has signalled its intention to veto any UN Security Council's condemnation of Israel for this aggressive attack.

Unless Bush takes a more objective look at the behaviour and evil intentions of this man, it doesn't bode well for the Palestinians, Syrians and Jordanians - the last having the country nominated by Sharon to accommodate the to-be-expelled Palestinian people.

But the more important point for the US is that it will continue to be viewed by the Arabs as an unfair, uncaring and unfriendly nation that only supports Israel no matter how brutal and aggressive it is. And the Americans wonder why the Arab people don't love them!