The Annapolis conference on Tuesday was full of lofty rhetoric, intriguing new promises, a few bold commitments, and a tantalizing cast of characters - alongside plenty of rehashed rhetoric, rigid positions, and regurgitated, failed diplomatic mechanisms. It left us with as many questions as answers about whether this was a serious Arab-Israeli peace-making endeavor, or a hoax garnished with Chesapeake Bay clam cakes.
Annapolis the day after looks remarkably like the day before, because we can only judge it once the substantive negotiations start. It was impressive to see so many leaders and officials seeking a breakthrough for permanent peace on the single most important radicalizing and destabilizing issue in the Middle East: the Arab-Israeli conflict. A few dramatic twists were evident: renewed American engagement, Saudi and Syrian participation, and the pledge by Palestinians and Israelis to finalize a peace agreement within one year. These were largely neutralized, however, by lofty but vague rhetoric and a slightly desperate resort to discredited diplomatic processes that have repeatedly and catastrophically failed in the past 16 years, since the 1991 Madrid peace conference.
The Annapolis process needs time to reveal if it will succeed or fail, with the real test yet to come in the form of the hard bargaining on the core issues of refugees, settlements, Jerusalem, borders and security. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas offered nothing new, suggesting minimal will to compromise on their entrenched positions. The joint understanding between the two parties as well as President George W. Bush's speech were more significant affairs, but they were also equally problematic.
The joint statement did not specifically refer to United Nations resolutions as reference points to resolve the conflict, unlike all previous peace-making attempts at Madrid, Oslo, Taba and Camp David. Instead, it made the United States the judge and arbiter of compliance with the requirements of the "road map." The US has played this monitoring role before, and failed spectacularly. Its past failure was due to a combination of pro-Israeli bias, structural diplomatic incompetence, chronic insincerity and weak resolve. It will be important to see if any of these conditions have changed. We should know within a few months at most.
The US has not proved to be an impartial, persistent or effective mediator in the Middle East since the mid-1970s (unlike in Northern Ireland, where it performed brilliantly and helped bring that conflict to an end). Washington's commitment, in the 2005 Bush letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, to supporting Israel's views on borders, settlements and refugees would seem to disqualify it from its new self-appointed role as impartial compliance monitor, mediator and arbiter.
Bush's references to Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people also brings the US down on the Israeli side of the current tug-of-war over whether Israel is a Jewish nation or the state of all its people, including one-fifth of its citizens who are Christian or Muslim Arabs. A "Jewish state" would also seem to imply that no compromise can be reached on the repatriation of Palestinian refugees, as required by UN resolutions.
Making the 2003 Quartet road map a centerpiece of the diplomatic path ahead is deeply unimpressive. The road map has proven to be hollow, ineffective and unrealistic. For the Annapolis parties to commit again to implementing moves on the ground that they previously and repeatedly failed to implement is amateurish diplomacy.
The road map is not a balanced and clear document. It has been interpreted in very different ways by Israelis and Palestinians on key issues such as settlement expansion or terrorism, which partly explains why it was never implemented. If the US- and Israeli-dominated Quartet was a failure, the US alone in a supervisory position will almost certainly prove to be worse - especially during a US presidential election year when slightly hysterical pro-Israeli expressions are the order of the day.
The commitment to negotiate tirelessly and to try to achieve a full peace accord within a year is valiant, but also romantic in view of the huge differences on core issues that have to be negotiated. Neither side has signaled any tangible willingness to make the crucial concessions needed for a full and lasting peace. Both are also both constrained by serious domestic political opposition. Annapolis looks dangerously like the 2000 Camp David II negotiations all over again, when a time-pressed American president rushed Arabs and Israelis into a negotiation that they were not prepared for and were not able to deliver on politically.
Most Palestinians and Israelis want a peaceful resolution of their conflict, and are prepared for serious, reciprocal compromises. Sadly, Annapolis seems to confirm again, neither side has been able to generate the bold, quality leadership required to mobilize public support to achieve such a peace. A decisive, constructive shift in American, Arab and European engagement in the negotiations could rescue this precarious process.
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