Some time ago I asked one of Europe’s foreign ministers why we should hold out any hopes for the forthcoming Annapolis conference on the Middle East. Had something changed to suggest Israelis and Palestinians would strike the bargain that has so long eluded them?

Appearances suggested otherwise. Granted, there was a lot of talk around about redrawing the geopolitical map of the Middle East to forge a grand alliance against the rising power of Iran. Israel and the Sunni-led Arab states might find common cause in a common enemy. By extension, Israel might conclude that peace with the Palestinians was a useful precaution against an existential threat from Iran.

This, though, was all in the realms of strategic theory. The on-the-ground reality was that the split between Fatah and Hamas had set the Palestinians at war with each other and many Israelis, their government enfeebled by the 2006 conflict in Lebanon, seemed content to shelter behind the relative security of the West Bank barrier.

The minister’s reply was illuminating for its hint of desperation. The conference had to come up with something, he said, in order to prop up Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. With Hamas in control of Gaza, it was vital to demonstrate that Mr Abbas’s commitment to negotiations would yield concrete results.

That, too, had been the essential purpose in appointing Tony Blair as the special representative for Palestinian reconstruction of the so-called Quartet, comprising the US, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union. Mr Blair’s task has been to draw up a package of “quick wins” – measures that would quickly improve the day-to-day lives of Palestinians in the event of a deal.

I thought it curious that the minister had framed Annapolis in terms of the often violent struggle between Mr Abbas’s Fatah movement and the Islamist Hamas. Surely, it should be about getting agreement between the Palestinians – defined as broadly as possible – and Israel?

These two things – a pathway to peace and the isolation of those in Hamas who refuse to relinquish terrorism – might, of course, be interchangeable. Many would say they should be. Nothing would more likely weaken the attraction of violent extremism than an agreement with Israel that at once offered immediate benefits to Palestinians and a credible path to statehood.

But as Annapolis approaches, the danger is of a fracturing of this linkage: in an approach that assumes the isolation of Hamas is more important than applying the necessary pressure on Israelis and Palestinians for a substantive accord.

The problem lies in Washington’s Manichean insistence that all terrorists are simply terrorists: they must be excluded and defeated rather than sometimes engaged and, if possible, won over to politics. Hamas is thus put in the same pigeonhole as al-Qaeda, Hizbollah and myriad others. The reality is that any enduring peace will depend on sufficient guarantees of Israel’s security; and that will rest in turn on moderate elements in Hamas eventually joining a broadly based Palestinian government. Gaza cannot simply be forgotten at Annapolis, least of all by the Israelis.

Perhaps we should not be surprised, then, that senior diplomats are playing down expectations. What was once described as a conference is now referred to as a “meeting”. The attendance has yet to be finalised. The purpose is not to secure an agreement, the briefing runs, but rather a statement of intent from Israel’s Ehud Olmert and the Palestinians’ Mr Abbas. In the words of David Miliband, Britain’s foreign secretary, the road beyond Annapolis will matter every bit as much as the one to the meeting.

The flaw in this, superficially neat, construction is that the road from Annapolis will be drawn by what happens there. Yet the ambition for the statement is similarly modest. It is to create a framework for negotiation rather than to pre-empt the outcome of final status negotiations. We have been here before. That was the purpose of the 2003 road map.

We know the shape of any final settlement: security for Israel, a Palestinian state based on the 1949 armistice lines with borders adjusted by one-to-one land swaps, a shared capital in Jerusalem and an agreement on right of return that recognises Israel as a Jewish state.

So what is new? As I understand it, the hope is that Annapolis could telescope the first and third stages of the road map. The end to Palestinian violence, the freeze on Israeli settlements and the other confidence measures envisaged in stage one could lead directly to the final status talks of stage three. The Palestinian institution-building once envisaged for stage two, and now part of Mr Blair’s remit, would proceed in parallel.

It sounds straightforward. But then it always has. As ever what matters is whether Mr Olmert and Mr Abbas have the political authority and the will (one is of no use without the other) to compromise. The signs are not auspicious. Both leaders are weak. Mr Olmert does not want to prejudge any final status negotiations. Visiting London this week, the best he offered was that Annapolis could “set the direction” for peace. Yet Mr Abbas can win the argument for politics over violence only if a Palestinian state comes into much sharper focus.

What is different, European officials say, is that Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, has been closely and energetically engaged – applying the pressure and offering the guarantees essential to persuade Mr Olmert to move. Stephen Hadley, the White House national security adviser, has also been busy telling allies that George W. Bush is fully behind Ms Rice. I wonder. The US president resiled from the same promise many times when his friend Mr Blair was Britain’s prime minister.

Meanwhile Gaza, now a wretched prison for its population, is forgotten. The Americans insist that to talk to Hamas would be to undermine Mr Bush’s global war on terror. Mr Blair has been told he is not allowed to open contacts. Yet neither Gaza nor Hamas can be wished out of existence. Ask those in Israel facing regular rocket attacks.

Perhaps my pessimism will prove unfounded. I certainly hope so. But I fear that a process that began with the aim of isolating the advocates of violence may end up doing the reverse. The legacy of the failed peace at Camp David was the second intifada. No one has more to gain from failure at Annapolis than those who want a third Palestinian uprising.