Rice's Clock

Four former ambassadors to the Middle East, three of whom also served as under secretary of state, have signed a paper circulated this week under the sponsorship of the Israel Policy Forum, a dovish Washington institute. They were joined by a CIA man, an adviser and a professor - an impressive group. Tell me who your writers are and I'll tell you what's in the paper. In this case, it's advice to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in advance of the "Annapolis meeting," the Israeli-Palestinian peace summit planned for November. "The meeting as it stands now seems to be something of a gamble," they write, adding that if there is no consensual position paper, "the meeting should be postponed until it is ready." They are also worried because no recipe has been found to solve the problem of Hamas. In effect, they are implying that a way should be found to include the organization.

The paper was sent to Rice, whose efforts are being praised by the institute's leaders as "an important opening to advance dialogue." But this is praise based on deceit: Some of the writers have a particularly low opinion of her functioning in the region. Their opinion is not exceptional either in Washington or Israel. Either she "doesn't understand" or "she wasn't sufficiently involved." Some people are more generous, giving her the benefit of the doubt: She's not to blame, President George W. Bush is. Not surprisingly, many of these accusers were members of previous administrations. People who chalked up dizzying successes, from the highly publicized and useless Madrid Conference, to the pretentious and failed Camp David summit.

Here is an interesting innovation in the trilateral Palestinian-Israeli-American relationship. If in the early 1990s Israel and its refusal (Yitzhak Shamir) were blamed for diplomatic failures, and in the end the Arab leader (Yasser Arafat) was blamed, now the blame is being placed at the Americans' doorstep. The implication: the weaker the Israeli leaders (Ehud Olmert as opposed to Shamir) and the Palestinian leaders (Mahmoud Abbas as opposed to Arafat), the more difficult it becomes to blame them for an action or failure. The children are having a hard time making up, and the responsibility falls on the kindergarten teacher. In any case, the teacher's time is getting short, a few weeks to the summit, a year and a quarter to retirement. "Will you be able to get it done in the time that remains?" she is asked in a discussion with CBS.

Rice initiated the "Annapolis meeting" with her eyes open, and she will have difficulty transferring the blame to others for its failure. The only other candidates are the leaders of the neighboring Arab countries. Rice believes that "No Palestinian leader can make some of the decisions that a Palestinian leader will have to make in order to get a state without the support of the Arabs." Yesterday she received another letter; Rice's mailman will be working overtime until November. Most of the members of the U.S. Senate, headed by Democrat Chuck Schumer and Republican Lindsey Graham, are calling on her to "press friendly Arab countries" to participate in the meeting and make themselves useful. What will Rice's job be at the meeting? The option that Israel likes is - bring the Arabs. But there are others. The Arabs say - press Israel. The Palestinians say - shorten procedures on the way to implementation.

In any case, and as opposed to what is commonly assumed, the real controversy before and after the summit will not be the right of return, Jerusalem or borders. These have all been discussed and clarified in endless forums, and a general outline for solving them has already been written in many versions. At most they will serve as an excuse, a stumbling block, to conceal the real gap between the sides: the question of the timetable.

An official involved in the discussion recently offered an interpretation of the exchange of roles between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel once accepted the need to give now (evacuation, prisoners, checkpoints) to receive compensation in the future: an end to the conflict. Now the situation is reversed. The Palestinians are being asked to compromise now (Jerusalem, the right of return) to receive compensation in the future: a Palestinian state. All this, of course, on the assumption that the principles being signed now will be only a "diplomatic horizon" for the future, as Rice promised, rather than a plan for immediate implementation. Between Rice's shortening time frame and her preliminary promises, senior political leaders are detecting with a certain disappointment that impatience is growing. The clock is likely to win.