Peace in the Middle East has been but a faint glimmer on the horizon since the 2000 Camp David talks failed. But now, both the Israelis and Palestinians say they are once again committed to reaching an agreement. But it might depend on their neighbors.
A Palestinian member of the Fatah Movement watches the Annapolis summit on television last week.
The command center of the Palestinian National Security forces in the West Bank town of Hebron is surrounded by concrete block barricades. Palestinian guards in olive-green uniforms hold their Kalashnikovs at the ready. Major General Thiab al-Ali, 63, the commander of more than 8,000 troops, sits inside chatting about the enemy.
On the wall behind him is a picture of Yasser Arafat, the now-deceased founder of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and former president of the Palestinian Territories. Ali spent 30 years leading the PLO in Lebanon in its struggle against Israel. But now he has changed his mind about the identity of the Palestinians' worst enemy: It is, he says, the Palestinians themselves. "We fought Israel in the past," says the general, "but today we are forced take up arms against our own people."
Hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets last Tuesday in Hebron to protest the Middle East peace conference that was taking place on the same day in Annapolis, Maryland. Ali ordered his troops to the scene, but the demonstrators refused to disband. Shots were fired. A number of demonstrators were injured and one was killed.
'Our Own State'
Commander Ali, though, is concerned that this may be just the beginning of a long fight. His primary goal at the moment is to prevent Hamas extremists from violently taking over the West Bank, as they did in the Gaza Strip in June. "I would use every means available to keep this from happening," says Ali. He also admits that he does not understand why people object to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas negotiating with the Israelis. "Abbas knows what he is doing," says Ali. "He will get us our nation." Ali also thinks that Annapolis was a success: "Finally the whole world agrees that we should get our own state."
Such confidence was a rarity last week. Even before the conference began, commentators around the world had cynically declared the Middle East conference, which the Americans had organized in a small naval city 50 kilometers (31 miles) east of Washington, little more than a photo opportunity. There was great resistance, especially among Arab countries, to attending a conference that promised to deliver a lot of show but little substance. Countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia did not accept the invitation to attend the conference until the last minute.
A malicious joke was making the rounds among critics of the Annapolis meeting in Israel in the weeks leading up the event: Why haven't the invitations gone out yet for Annapolis? Answer: Invitations are only sent out weeks in advance for weddings -- but invitations that are sent out the day before are for funerals. The punch line could have come from a Hamas leader.
But the critics were too quick to read Annapolis' epitaph. In fact, last week the Middle East peace process woke up from a seven-year coma, a torpor into which it had descended after the failure of the Camp David talks way back in 2000. The patient, as it turned out, was weak but still alive. The question now is whether it will be a full recovery.
Good Intentions Not Enough
The first signs of life are at least encouraging. The Israeli and Palestinian officials in Annapolis even managed, at the last minute, to come up with a joint statement. They vowed to launch bilateral negotiations immediately to address "all issues in dispute, without exception," the goal being an agreement on the establishment of a Palestinian state by the end of next year. The reality that began in 1967 after the Six-Day War, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert predicted, will "change dramatically." Even the chronically sullen Palestinian President Abbas characterized the conference as a turning point that would mark the beginning of a "post-Annapolis era." These are big words, but good intentions alone will not be sufficient.
The peace process will not get back on its feet without the financial and political support of the international community. A Paris donor conference is planned for mid-December, at which the Europeans, in particular, are expected to commit to generous injections of financial support for the Palestinian economy. There has also been progress on the issue of security. The United States is paying to train police units for Abbas's Fatah Party to help them fight Hamas and other extremists. The Europeans are contributing to the training program, while Israel has agreed to allow weapons and armored vehicles to be brought into the West Bank.
It is a treatment with many possible side effects. Abbas stands to lose his support among the Palestinian people unless he can show some evidence of success soon. On the other side of the equation, Olmert, by making the necessary concessions, risks splitting his coalition government.
Still, never before has a Middle East peace process been supported by such a broad international front. Much, of course, depends on the will of the Americans to continue their commitment after Annapolis. But the importance of the summit goes well beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The meeting could mark a new chapter in Middle East realpolitik -- a return to diplomacy in the style of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Democratic Legitimacy?
The Arab autocrats, for instance, stand to gain in three ways. In the Middle East, they create the impression that they are interceding selflessly on behalf of the Palestinians. The United States offers them support against Iran, the new major power on the Gulf. Finally, the sheer difficulty of this phase in the peace process draws the world's attention away from questions -- recently gaining in intensity -- about their democratic legitimacy. Such reasoning clearly propelled Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan to participate in the talks. All three Sunni states see themselves as "moderate," and the interests of all three have been converging with Israel's for some time.
Things are much more difficult for Syria. The country officially maintains close ties with Iran, but the government of President Bashar Assad is divided into two camps. Both are open to an easing of tensions with the West and are committed to regaining control of the Golan Heights through diplomacy. But while Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallim would likely accept a break with Tehran in return, Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa is reluctant to give up the support of Iran's mullahs, which has proven valuable to Syria.
The Syrian president himself explained, in an interview only two days before Annapolis, why Syria would not attend the conference. But Assad changed his mind and sent his deputy foreign minister to the meeting -- over Tehran's objections. Sources in Damascus say that a telephone conversation between Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad led to "personal antagonism."
Syria seems to be on the verge of a fundamental shift in its foreign policy -- not unlike the 1990s when Damascus withdrew its support for both a beleaguered Iraq and for Turkey's Kurdish Workers' Party, the PKK. A similar scenario appears to be taking shape in relation to Palestinian groups like Hamas, whose leaders have had their military headquarters in Damascus for decades. The Syrian regime cancelled a counter-summit at the last minute. When Tehran offered to hold the meeting instead, the Iranian ambassador in Damascus received a letter from 10 Palestinian leaders, who wrote that the time for the counter-summit was "unfortunately inopportune, despite Tehran's tempting offer."
Syria, which US President George W. Bush still considers a rogue nation, plays an important role within the broader context of the dangerous game taking shape in the Middle East. The key issue in the region is no longer the Arab-Israeli conflict, but the growing confrontation between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Iran. If Syria changes sides, the West will have deprived Tehran of its closest Arab ally -- an incalculable gain for the anti-Iranian alliance of Arabs, Israelis and the West.
The German Role
German diplomats, in particular, feel that they deserve at least some of the credit for Damascus having symbolically distanced itself from the camp of aggressive enemies of Israel last week. "Now we are seeing nations sitting at the same table that don't even have diplomatic relations with each other," crowed German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Berlin's chief diplomat has spent most of the last year and a half trying to set up talks with Damascus -- an effort that the United States, the Israelis and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have all viewed with skepticism. When he announced plans to travel to Damascus for the first time, in the summer of 2006, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged her German counterpart not to go. Merkel also made it clear that she was opposed to the visit.
But Steinmeier was undaunted. It was mid-August, and he was already sitting on a plane on the runway in Amman when he received the news that, only hours earlier, Syrian President Assad had made a statement praising Hezbollah's armed fight against Israel. After several hectic phone calls, Steinmeier cancelled his trip to Damascus, partly out of fear of criticism from Germany's allies.
He tried a second time last December, when he spent two hours meeting with Assad, explaining to him what rapprochement with the West could mean for his impoverished and isolated country. Steinmeier was relieved to report that Assad had made it clear "that Syria no longer wants to be part of the problem in the Middle East, but part of the solution."
Next Stop, Russia
But he wasn't done. Within the last three months, he sent Andreas Michaelis, the head of his Middle East and North Africa Affairs department, to Damascus three times. In recent weeks, Steinmeier noticed that even the Americans were abandoning their policy of isolating Syria. Steinmeier met with Rice again in early November at a conference on Iraq held in Istanbul. The US Secretary of State asked her German counterpart to use his contacts to convince Syria to attend the conference in Annapolis, and he agreed.
Ultimately, if the peace process is to be successful, it needs to be supported by as many Arab countries as possible, making Syria's role a key one. The challenge, though, is to make sure that every country participating in the process has more interest in success than it does in failure. When it comes to Syria, that means that Israel must give Damascus realistic hope that the Golan Heights will be handed back. In return, Syria would have to abandon its support for Hezbollah and help prevent the extremist group from launching further military strikes against Israel in southern Lebanon.
The government in Jerusalem is opposed to what it calls the "internationalization" of the Middle East conflict, instead preferring to conduct secret negotiations. But Prime Minister Olmert also recognizes that Annapolis has set a process into motion from which he would find it difficult to withdraw.
The Russians have announced a follow-up conference for next spring, with the Syrian-Israeli question at the top of the agenda. Russian President Vladimir Putin is using his strong connections to Damascus as an incentive for Olmert. "I am the only one who has influence over Assad," Putin said. "It would be a waste not to use this advantage."
Given the complicated negotiations with the Palestinians, Olmert is thankful for the Syrian option. Several times in recent months, he has, through middlemen, signaled his willingness to negotiate with Assad, but the Americans have repeatedly stood in his way. The Annapolis conference has now eliminated this hurdle. In a private meeting in Washington, US President Bush told Olmert that he would not oppose Israeli-Syrian negotiations. His one condition was that he wants to be kept up to date on the status of talks. "Just don't surprise us," Bush warned Olmert.
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