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The opening of Tuesday's Middle East conference in Annapolis, seven years into the Bush administration, is a reminder of how little the traditional concept of brokering an Arab-Israeli settlement through an ongoing "peace process" has figured into President Bush's foreign policy.
Another is Bush's near-absence from the Middle East during his presidency. He has traveled to the region four times, but two of those visits were one-day trips to Iraq, and one was for a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Hours before the opening of a high-stakes international conference on the Middle East, President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed hope Monday that peace finally could be achieved. A senior member of the Palestinian delegation said an elusive joint statement on the contours for future talks was within reach.
An air of necessity, and thus possibility, lies over the Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md. If Ben Franklin were there, as he was in Philadelphia to help 13 states draft a US Constitution, he might give the same advice to participants: We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
Obstacles abound. When representatives of more than 40 nations convene in Annapolis tomorrow, hoping to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, there will be many reasons for pessimism.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas presides over a fractured people, with Hamas ready to spoil any agreement. Qassam rockets fired from Gaza remind Israelis what a hostile Palestinian state could do from the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is politically vulnerable to extremist figures on the Israeli side who want no concessions.
If Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice want to set the Annapolis conference to music, I have a suggestion: the chorus from Sugarland's latest country music hit: "Everybody's dreamin' big, but everybody's just gettin' by."
By sending its top three leaders to the Annapolis peace summit, Israel is hoping to make a statement about the seriousness of its approach to peacemaking with the Palestinians.
But a more complex reality lies under the surface of this diplomatic show.
The big three -- Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni -- have much different notions about what can be achieved with the Palestinians and how best to go about it.
Pessimism is always the safe option when contemplating the chances of peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Expectations are certainly extremely low ahead of the international meeting in Annapolis in the US on Tuesday.
The Palestinian side is fragmented; the Israelis are wary; the Americans are distracted; the Arabs are sceptical. It is nice that the Brazilians and Senegalese are sending delegations. But it might be more useful if the Iranians or Hamas were in attendance.
This week will see George Bush make his first, and almost certainly his only, major attempt to bring an end to the world's most intractable conflict. As participants gather for tomorrow's Middle East conference in Annapolis, Maryland, the spotlight is on the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Syrians and the Saudis – but the most important consideration lies closer to home: how will President Bush fare in a belated attempt to play peacemaker.
President Bush probably saved his blushes when announcing that the Arab-Israeli conflict would not be solved in a day and a night at Annapolis, but that a full year would be needed — basically the rest of his term — for the US to try to broker a peace. Washington hopes that the two sides work toward the establishment of an independent Palestinian state before Bush leaves office and that the negotiations will be launched at the conference in Annapolis.
Many flaws have been identified in the organization of the Middle East peace conference this week at Annapolis, in the US state of Maryland. Arab officials, in particular, harbor deep-seated fears that their participation may be used as cover for a gathering that fails to achieve anything of substance toward settling the dispute at the core of the region's troubles, that between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
It is true that, to date, U.S. President George W. Bush has not exhibited a great deal of wisdom in his dealings with the Middle East. But it hard to believe that the leader of the superpower and his aides do not recognize the risk they have taken by holding the Annapolis summit. One doesn't have to be Henry Kissinger to appreciate that the summit cannot end in nothing - zero. The size of the achievement, or the depth of the failure, will be proportional to the delegation level in attendance and the number of hours of TV broadcasts, mostly to the Arab world.
U.S. President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice can chalk up an important achievement with the Annapolis summit that begins tomorrow: The Arab countries acceded to the American request and are taking part in the conference with a high profile, let alone taking part. Foreign ministers and not ambassadors will represent them. This decision's significance goes beyond Arab backing for the Palestinians, or a pat on the back for the American president, whose stature is eroding greatly in the region.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators made progress on Monday toward completing a joint statement for the planned Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md., and President Bush appeared ready to paper over remaining differences between the two sides with his planned speech on Tuesday.
At an intersection in front of Nablus city hall, a pair of women threaded a knot of waiting pedestrians, glanced left, then dashed across the street. “What’s this?” an onlooker chastised them. “Can’t you see the red light?” Not long after, his patience exhausted, the self-appointed traffic cop himself stepped off the curb and made his way to the other side of the boulevard.
The clock is winding down on yet another U.S. president who's trying to broker an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has outlasted 10 of his predecessors and will be 60 years old on May 14, Israel's 60th birthday.
The Bush administration has left the issue on the back burner for six years to concentrate on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has now invited Arab, Israeli and world leaders for a day of Middle East peace talks in Annapolis, Md., on Tuesday.
The middle-east conference to be convened in Annapolis, Maryland on 27 November 2007 must, if it is to be effective, be conceived as a return to a peace-building process whose objective is to realise a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse.
We expected the US-sponsored international peace summit in Annapolis, to trigger intra-Arab conflicts as usual.
Interestingly enough, this meeting has healed wounds, some of which have been bleeding for years on various fronts. It is an odd phenomenon that contradicts all possibilities on the table. I have observed the following developments so far:
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/5839
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/5839
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/5839
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] http://www.americantaskforce.org/world_press_roundup/20071126t000000
[6] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/25/AR2007112501333_pf.html
[7] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/26/AR2007112600140_pf.html
[8] http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1126/p08s01-comv.htm
[9] http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/11/26/obstacles_and_opportunity_for_mideast_peace/
[10] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oe-miller26nov26,1,6031974.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
[11] http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/20071123olmertlivnibarak.html
[12] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d820e22a-9b8a-11dc-8aad-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
[13] http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article3196246.ece
[14] http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=103991&d=26&m=11&y=2007
[15] http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&article_id=87006&categ_id=17
[16] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/927863.html
[17] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/927864.html
[18] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/washington/27diplo.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast&oref=slogin
[19] http://www.merip.org/mero/mero112607.html
[20] http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/21919.html
[21] http://www.opendemocracy.com/article/conflicts/israel_palestine/annapolis_amman
[22] http://www.asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=2&id=10998
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