A senior Palestinian official said here on Thursday that it would be a “miracle” if the Palestinian and Israeli negotiating teams agreed on a joint document, as they had hoped, to present at the American-sponsored Middle East peace gathering set to start Tuesday in Annapolis, Md.
But the official held out the possibility that a last-minute agreement on a short outline of intentions or principles could be reached in Washington, with help from the Bush administration, on the eve of the meeting.
“I don’t know if the administration could do something at the last moment,” said Nimr Hamad, a political adviser to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. “If something is going to happen, it will be in Washington,” he said.
Israeli officials agreed with him on timing. “There might be a joint statement, and there might not be,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, who leads the Israeli negotiating team. “Obviously it would be good to have one, and we are committed to continue working to reach one,” Mr. Regev said. “I expect the work to go on till Tuesday.”
But the brinkmanship could also be seen as reflecting a longer term Palestinian goal: Mr. Hamad suggested that the difficulties in agreeing on a text underscored the need for more international involvement in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
Israeli, Palestinian and American leaders have billed the Annapolis meeting as a launching pad for serious, continuous negotiations meant to lead to a two-state solution of the conflict.
But Mr. Hamad said that the “experience of the last two months, of not being able to agree on one page” of text, showed that international involvement was necessary “for negotiations to be serious” later.
Israel has always rejected the idea of outside mediation. “Israel is very clear that this is a bilateral process,” said an Israeli government official who asked not to be identified by name because of the delicacy of the negotiations. “There is no need for outsiders telling us what to do.”
Originally, the Israeli and Palestinian teams set out to work on a joint text for Annapolis that would refer to the core issues of the conflict, including borders, security arrangements, the status of Jerusalem and the problem of the Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war and their descendants.
Israel sought to touch on these issues as generally as possible, without outlining solutions. The Palestinians had wanted a more detailed document with a clear timeline for resolving the conflict.
A Nov. 17 draft of the proposals between the negotiating parties obtained by The New York Times, parts of which were published on Thursday, showed how wide the gaps between the sides still were. Large sections were bracketed, meaning that they remained in dispute.
The Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams worked in Jerusalem until late Wednesday night, but by Thursday morning, the principal Palestinian negotiators had left for meetings with the Arab League in Cairo.
Late Thursday, after a first day of meetings to try to form a unified position on the Annapolis conference, Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian negotiator, said, “The presence of Syria at the conference is support for us, and this is what we want.”
Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, said the Golan Heights, a Syrian territory occupied by Israel, was discussed Thursday. “I hope all countries will participate if we are all convinced that there is something serious in the conference,” he said. But “there will be no normalization for free.”
In Jerusalem, Miri Eisin, a spokeswoman for Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said there was still a chance of completing a joint statement. “We can work on it in Washington,” she said. “It’s not a lost cause.”
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