By pushing Israel to accept immediate negotiations with the Palestinians on the thorny “final status” issues, with the aim to conclude a peace settlement within a year, the Bush administration is trying to attract a significant Arab presence at the peace conference in Annapolis, Md.
The meeting in Annapolis, now penciled in to start Nov. 26 and last less than 24 hours, is meant to begin — and bless — negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders on a final peace agreement between them, ostensibly to be completed by the end of the Bush presidency.
The all-out push essentially speeds to the end of the now dormant 2003 “road map” for peace by insisting that the big issues once relegated to later discussion, like the status of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees, be addressed immediately, even before the Palestinians begin to dismantle terrorist groups and networks.
Simultaneously, the Americans will push both sides to carry out their obligations as laid out in the first stage of the road map, involving complex security and settlement issues, American and Israeli officials say. To press for action, which would involve painful decisions on both sides, the Americans will choose a senior official with a background in security to monitor progress. In the words of a senior American diplomat, “We’ll be assiduously fair, and very tough, and if necessary we will be public,” so that failure will have consequences.
The new American mantra is that only with parallel efforts to negotiate a peace will the Palestinians make serious efforts to build state institutions and crack down on terrorism, and the Israelis stop settlement growth and dismantle illegal settlement outposts.
As a senior official put it, “We had to break this tyranny of the first stage of the road map before talking of final status” so that the year of negotiations will give the two parties the incentive and the time to prove to each other that they can end up as peaceful neighbors. Israel wants to be sure that if it withdraws from the West Bank there will be a reliable Palestinian security force to stop aggression and terrorism, and that a Hamas-run Gaza will not be replicated on the West Bank.
The first stage of the road map is detailed and difficult, and there are already fierce arguments about what those written commitments actually entail.
For example, what does it really mean for the Palestinians to “undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks on Israelis anywhere,” especially when Hamas runs Gaza?
Similarly, what does it really mean that Israel “freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).” Does that mean an absolutely flat population rate, and how can that be done without banning marriages and births?
The Israelis are also worried that even if they can negotiate a final settlement — which will be put on a shelf while it is carried out over a number of years — a change in Palestinian leadership or a victory of Hamas could mean that efforts to carry it out stop and that even such a “final” agreement becomes just another starting point for Palestinian demands.
American officials are not sure that the negotiations, even with leaders who seem to respect one another, will succeed. Others worry that the effort to get Annapolis in place has meant that the Bush administration has not done the diplomatic groundwork necessary to get the negotiations off to a rapid and serious start, or that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will not be able to spend the time necessary to keep the parties moving ahead when the difficult issues of borders, security, refugees and Jerusalem surface in all their excruciating detail.
The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, who was prime minister at the failed Camp David talks of 2000, said he once told Ms. Rice, who studied in Denver, that from a distance, the Rocky Mountains looked like a wave on the landscape. “But up close,” he said, “they are real mountains.”
Still, the question for now is the level of Arab participation. The whole idea of Annapolis is to give the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, Arab encouragement and support for his effort to negotiate a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem. That is likely to mean a significant and volatile concession on the right of return of Palestinian refugees and their families to their pre-1948 homes — also a crucial issue for neighboring Arab states with large Palestinian populations.
Washington also wants Arab blessing for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s main concession so far: to agree to have final-status negotiations with Mr. Abbas before the road map first stage is carried out. The Arab League initiative, drafted by the Saudis, promises that the Arabs will formally recognize Israel once a deal is done with the Palestinians and Syrians — this meeting is supposed to provide solid evidence of that slow Arab reconciliation.
But Arab presence and the level of that presence remain open, especially for Saudi Arabia and Syria, crucial countries.
The invitations, still not formally extended, are for foreign ministerial level. The Bush administration badly wants the Saudi foreign minister to come, not just the Saudi ambassador to Washington.
The Syrians, whom Washington and the Arabs want to woo away from their close ties to Iran, have had a separate invitation, which they sought, and a promise that their territory occupied by Israel — the Golan Heights — will also be on the public agenda of Annapolis.
Given the essentially ceremonial nature of the Annapolis meeting, these issues of participation will matter.
As a fallback, senior American officials say, they still have the possibility of postponing the meeting to the week of Dec. 10. In the meantime, delegations are booking hotel rooms all over Washington.
But even the Israeli left is worried. Colette Avital, a senior Labor Party member, was in Washington for briefings from Bush officials.
“We understand that Annapolis will launch something, and we understand to a certain degree it can’t be much more,” she said. “But the groundwork is not being prepared for the next day.”
Ms. Avital said she supported the Bush efforts and the timing. “But I would like to see this done more carefully and ensure that work is done to make it a success,” she said. “It will be a long shot anyway. Most of us know how easy it is to fail, and what are the consequences of failure, and those could be very bad this time.”
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