A Second Look at Annapolis

David Aikman

A “successful” round of talks?

It is more than two weeks now since the Annapolis Conference on Middle East peace convened by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on the property of the U.S. Naval Academy. The one-day conference could hardly avoid being seen as a huge anti-climax, in spite of the fact that it was touch and go until just before the event that some of the countries invited would even turn up. The invitees were nearly fifty in number, and included the entire Arab League’s 22 members, representatives of the EU, the UN, China and Russia. The central guests of the conference, of course, were Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Conspicuous by their absence—they were not invited—were representatives of the Palestinian political party, Hamas, and of course, the Iranians, who denounced the conference before, during, and after it took place.

What was the point of this one-day diplomatic jamboree? No one in the U.S. or on the Palestinian or Israeli sides expected anything significant to happen at all. Briefers from all three countries kept stressing that the purpose was to jump start negotiations that had originally been initiated after the “Oslo Accords” of 1993 and that had been bogged down since then by discouraging developments on the ground. From the Israeli point of view, the plague of suicide bombings that began in 1993, less than a year after the Declaration of Principles was signed by Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin and the PLO’s Yassir Arafat on the White House lawn, had destroyed confidence in the ability of the Palestinians to suppress terrorists in their midst. From the Palestinian point of view, the continuance of the Israeli military presence, indeed the re-imposition of it in some parts of the West Bank, and the continued expansion of Israeli settlements there, indicated a lack of sincerity in the Israeli willingness to work towards a compromise and lasting peace.

During the Clinton administration there were determined efforts by the White House to bring Israeli-Palestinian talks to a successful, final conclusion. Yassir Arafat was invited to the White House no fewer than 23 times during President Clinton’s White House years, and in the summer of 2000, months before his departure from office, Clinton presided over an effort to bridge the gap between the two sides by inviting then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Arafat to a several-day conference at Camp David. Even though the Palestinians launched their second “Intifadeh” (shaking-off) of demonstrations and more suicide bombings against Israel in September 2000, right up until he left office Clinton was hopeful of trying to move both sides to make compromises that might have broken the deadlock.

By contrast, when President Bush took office in January 2001, he reportedly announced during his first meeting with the National Security Council that he had no interest in getting dragged into another U.S.-led effort to orchestrate peacemaking in the Middle East. Reportedly, Condoleeza Rice, then National Security Advisor, shared his antipathy towards diplomacy in this region.

What changed President Bush’s mind? One factor, surely, was immense pressure on the U.S. from governments within the region to break the Israeli-Palestinian impasse out of fear that popular sentiment in favor of the Palestinians might break out into domestic unrest in their own (Arab) countries. Another was the feeling among U.S. allies that, with its unpopularity over the Iraq war palpable in many parts of the world, the U.S. needed to show that it was not completely dismissive of problems in the Middle East region. Reportedly, Britain’s prime minister Gordon Brown was forceful in urging President Bush to take action on the Arab-Israeli issue. Tony Blair had often made clear Europe’s desire for greater American involvement in Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy while he was still prime minister. There were also rumors that Russia’s President Putin threatened to orchestrate his own, Russian conference on the Middle East if the U.S. didn’t act.

Condoleeza Rice seemed to have been influenced enough by these pressures to become not a reluctant but an enthusiastic supporter of U.S. efforts to relaunch an Israeli-Palestinian peace process. She would undoubtedly have been impressed too by efforts of the Quartet (Russia, the U.S., the EU, and the UN), charged since 2003 with pushing forward the process, to generate some momentum.

Part of Rice’s achievement at Annapolis was in getting some of the delegates to show up at all. Only at the last minute did Syria agree to send its deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad. But he made it clear, as did Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal, that though he would attend, he would not shake hands with or converse with Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. Prince Saud also insisted that he would not enter the conference hall through the main entrance if the Israelis entered it that way. Israel’s delegation obliged his Israel-phobia by entering the hall through the servants’ entrance. Just to stress that it was Jewishness itself that was offensive to the Saudis and Syrians, President Bashar Assad has said on various occasions that he would not like to shake hands with a Jew. At the Annapolis conference, Prince Saud demonstrated the consistency of his own bigotry by refusing even to wear translation headphones when Prime Minister Olmert was speaking.

The U.S. shrugs off these ugly human slights by pointing out that the Saudis will be among the more important participants at a conference of donor states, convened in Paris the week of December 10, to attempt coordination of a financial aid package to the Palestinians to make possible the formation of a Palestinian state. The U.S. must also shrug off the ugly fact that much of the Arab media has proclaimed Annapolis “a failure” and even a “defeat” of the Arabs.

The irony is that the Israeli public, despite all the disappointments, has consistently shown itself in favor of a two-state solution: a Jewish state of Israel side by side with an Arab state of Palestine. A recent poll report in the newspaper Ha’aretz indicated that a solid 62 percent of Israelis favored an independent state for Palestinians and a slight majority even believed that the Palestinian Authority favored a two-state solution. Israeli skepticism has focused on indications that many ordinary Palestinians have not abandoned their desire to see Israel disappear as a state. Continuing teaching of hatred towards Israel and Jews in Palestinian schools, well reported in the Israeli press, is one indication of this. American pressure on Palestinians to curtail what is know as “incitement” goes back to well into the 1990’s, but evidently has produced little fruit.

It is considered bad form in the polite world of diplomacy to show pessimism about any ongoing negotiation, however daring it may be. But if it’s considered a major U.S. diplomatic achievement to have secured at a conference the presence of a Saudi foreign minister who refuses even to listen to speeches by other delegates, one wonders what the criteria for the American definition of diplomatic failure are.  

Dr. Aikman, a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum, was for many years senior correspondent for Time.

2 Responses (comments are closed) • Columns, David Aikman, War and Peace, Thu 13 Dec 2007