Serious negotiations do not normally take place at international conferences. They happen before or after them. If negotiations beforehand have been fruitful, a conference is a venue to publicise and formalise what has been agreed, or sometimes to settle one or two very difficult matters beyond the competence of the advance teams. On that test, Annapolis has not been a success. Palestinians and Israelis could not agree on a detailed joint document to put before the meeting. The short statement which was produced, on a day of speech-making and awkward ceremony, called for the resolution of all issues, but amazingly managed to avoid saying what these are.
No form of words could be found that one side or the other did not see as prejudging those issues, or as likely to open them up to attack from enemies back home. Annapolis has changed some things. The issues may not have been defined in a public way but everybody knows what they are, and the principle that they must be vigorously and simultaneously discussed has been enunciated, if hardly guaranteed. The Americans have moved toward the position that they will arbitrate fairly continuously, which, in theory, ought to hamper the familiar Israeli technique of reneging on commitments whenever it suits them, citing Palestinian security lapses of which they insist on being the sole judge.
Arab states now have a potential watching role over the talks due to take place over the coming year and could help the weakened Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, in dealing with his political opponents. Finally, the inclusion of a Syrian "track" implies the possibility of progress toward an Israel-Syria peace. These shifts, against a background in which Sunni Arab states and Israel recognise some common interests in containing Iran, are positive, but in a very limited way. Think what might have happened at Annapolis. The participants might have agreed to go back to Taba, the meeting after the Camp David failure at which Israelis and Palestinians came the closest they have ever been to peace. But neither side, and especially the Israelis, wants to put on the table what was there at that last encounter.
Peace is really quite simple. The Israelis have to hand over the 1967 territories, which, even with land swaps, means massive evacuations, not just trimming far-flung settlements, as well as something like half of Jerusalem. The Palestinians have to agree that no - or very, very few - refugees will go back to Israel. The Americans have to push and on occasion coerce. Otherwise the new peace process will become again what the old one was in the 90s: a means of avoiding peace rather than of achieving it.
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