Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas joined U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Ramallah Monday to express optimism that progress towards a Palestinian state could be made in the upcoming talks sponsored by the George W. Bush administration between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Annapolis, Maryland.
But many critics fear that the hastily thrown-together meeting has greater inherent risks than the participants are willing to acknowledge.
"The failure of this gathering, which will be the last effort of [the Bush] administration on this issue, will have serious consequences," said Rita Hauser, the former head of Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the current chair of the International Peace Academy, at a think-tank conference about the upcoming meetings.
Citing the start of heavy violence associated with the Second Intifada -- touched off after the failure of then-president Bill Clinton's 2000 Camp David summit -- many fear that the collapse of the talks, or even frustration with a mere token gesture towards some progress towards peace, will reignite large-scale violence both between Israel and Palestine and within the two warring factions that split the two Palestinian territories.
Rice twice referred to the upcoming negotiations as a "launch pad" for future negotiations in her press appearance with Mahmoud Abbas in the centre of power in the West Bank on Monday morning.
"They will define whatever happens in Annapolis -- a photo-op, statement, or kisses on both cheeks -- a success," said Hauser. "We in the real world will know it is a failure."
The tentative scheduling of the conference -- planned for late November, though increasingly looking like early December, with Rice only committing to having the talks by the end of 2007 -- is emblematic of the criticisms that it is poorly organised and bound to fail.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas -- also known as Abu Mazan -- will both attend the meeting, which is aimed at hashing out some of the preliminary details of agreements working towards a Palestinian state.
But both sides have already expressed concerns about the specifics of any agreement. Last week, Palestinian negotiators stated that they were seeking a timeline for the establishment of a Palestinian state, with a specific plan of implementation towards that end. That announcement prompted a response from Israeli officials that they would conduct negotiations behind closed doors and not in the press.
Israel is reported to be seeking only a vague statement that shows a joint desire of taking the initial steps towards establishing a process, rather than making concrete commitments on any of the issues that have thus far held up talks and the "final status" agreement that would shore up the existence of a Palestinian State.
Some analysts thought that negotiations would fail before they started when Olmert announced publicly last week that he has prostate cancer, but Olmert has reportedly spoken to both Rice and Abbas and assured them that he plans to attend the Annapolis conference before undergoing surgery.
"Nothing will happen now between the two parties," Hauser said about the lack of broad-based participation in the conference by neighbouring Arab countries with considerable interest in the negotiations. "You have to engage the bigger picture."
Not one of neighbouring Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt are scheduled to attend the conference. Jordan, Syria and Lebanon host a combined 2.5 million Palestinian refugees for which the "right-of-return" to a future Palestinian state has been a major point of contention between the two central negotiating parties.
"You can't disaggregate these problems anymore," said Hauser, also citing the recent mysterious Israel Defence Forces incursion into Syria and last summer's war between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah faction.
Another notable player that was not invited by the U.S. is the Islamic movement Hamas. Deemed a terrorist organisation by the U.S. and others, the group's political wing gained power in January 2006 elections, but took up arms against Abbas' Fatah faction after a period of heightened tensions culminated in failure to reach an agreement for shared power.
The resulting conflict between the two factions culminated in June when Hamas used force to seize control of the Gaza Strip, effectively dividing the Palestinian Authority in two, with Hamas controlling Gaza and Fatah the West Bank.
Keeping Hamas away from the table only to have the talks fail could result in increased support for Hamas, as Abbas' conciliatory theme will have again failed to bear any significant fruit.
"If it collapses, the biggest loser will be Abu Mazan and Fatah," said Paul Scham, an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington and the former director of research at the Truman Institute for Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "They put forward a moderate agenda to gain concessions from Israel and the U.S. Hamas can then say that Israel is not going to give anything up through negotiations."
Scham was cautious to say that Hamas is still "bottled up in Gaza", and that a failure to hash out many of the specifics of a final status will not necessarily result in killing, observing that the situation is vastly different from 2000.
A group of women from both Israel and Palestine who had gathered at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, a Washington policy think tank, for a meeting about the upcoming summit also refrained from criticising the negotiations before they see what the results are.
This group and Scham both feel that although Olmert and Abbas are too politically weak to make serious concessions, and Bush is entering the lame duck stage of his presidency, there can still be a positive outcome based on the rekindling of a peace process that has been largely stalled for the past seven years.
"It is easy to be cynical and say it's not going to work," said Palestinian women's activist Maha Abu-Dayyeh Shamas, "There are great risks, but there are also opportunities."
Shamas lamented the international community's isolation of Hamas and said, "Hamas is starting to have a split in their ranks -- the pragmatists versus the idealogues." This split could prompt Hamas to acknowledge Israel and open the door to negotiations.
Asked by IPS if she felt that it could be beneficial to wait to organise a conference at a later time when some of the shortcomings of Annapolis can be better dealt with, she said, "I am losing my society. Any colonial group in control will first break down the social connections. These are classic colonial tactics. We can't sit on the sideline anymore. If the talks collapse we have to go back to square one."
"We are looking at a one or one-and-a-half year window before the two-state solution falls by the wayside," said Naomi Chazan, an Israeli professor and former deputy speaker of the Knesset. "This is not a time for pessimist or optimist. This is not a time to wallow in disbelief. This is a time to suspend disbelief."
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