'What is missing, on each side, is trust in the other'.

• Position: From the Secretary-General

In just one week's time, we shall reach the twenty-fifth anniversary of President Anwar Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in 1977. Seldom has a political move deserved so richly to be called "historic". It caught the imagination of the world. It transformed the political landscape of the Middle East. And it defined Sadat as a historical figure.

President Sadat (of Egypt) showed courage, decisiveness and extraordinary political insight when he did what until then had seemed unthinkable for any Arab leader: he went to Jerusalem and declared, directly to the Israeli parliament and people, that "we welcome you among us with full security and safety". His visit represented an extraordinary leap of faith and imagination.

Alas, Sadat's journey also led, or at least contributed, to his untimely death. He himself must have known the risk he was taking, and that is the measure of his courage. Like Yitzhak Rabin fourteen years later, he paid the price of peace with his own life.

Looking at the Middle East peace process today, I wish I could say that those two sacrifices had brought a just, lasting and comprehensive peace to the Middle East, or at least that the leaders of today had shown a similar level of courage, vision and statesmanship. Sadly, I cannot. As we speak, Israelis and Palestinians are still locked in bitter conflict.

On both sides--Palestinian and Israeli--only those who believe their enemy can be defeated by force and violence show a grim confidence in the ultimate success of their chosen path. But on both sides, that confidence is surely misplaced.

Yet, all opinion polls concur: the majority of Palestinians accept the continued existence of Israel and are ready to live alongside it in their own State. And the majority of Israelis accept that peace requires the establishment of a Palestinian State in nearly all of the territory occupied in 1967.

What is missing, on each side, is trust in the other--and without that trust, the hope of peace becomes hard to sustain.

Somehow, we have to restore hope to both peoples, by patiently rebuilding their trust in each other. And that is what the Quartet of interested external parties--the United Nations, United States, European Union and Russian Federation--is seeking to do, by setting out a credible road map--a road map of synchronized steps that can lead, within three years, from the grim situation we are in now, to the peaceful two-State solution that the majority on both sides desire. This road map...