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Annapolis Countdown - October 15, 2007

The first edition of a new weekly APN publication provides the Where, When, Who, and What for the proposed Israeli-Palestinian peace conference...

After weeks of rather discreet, behind-the-scenes preparations for the peace parley that the Bush administration is trying to convene in Annapolis next month, talk about the planned meeting is becoming very public, gradually moving from the realm of speculation into the typical mode of bazaar-like jockeying and pre-positioning. The all-too familiar pre-negotiations hype and hoopla is here again.

Where: Potential participants were recently told that the parley will be held in Annapolis, MD, probably at the town's large US Naval base. The military setting will help provide security to the dignitaries and make it easier to keep reporters at bay.

When: Not yet clear. At first, Israeli and Palestinian diplomats were reportedly told by their American interlocutors that the meeting is scheduled for mid-November. Now there is talk about the end of the month, after Thanksgiving (November 26 is one of the dates mentioned. The 29th is another), but some Washington insiders say that the conference is likely to be pushed well into December.

Who: That's where things are getting messier. Israelis and Palestinians will be there, assuming that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Mahmoud Abbas complete their declaration (see below) in time and are ready to present it to the conferees. But who will the conferees be? Well, Syria has all but stated that it will not attend. "Syria has not received an invitation to the conference, and even if it did, it will not take part in a conference that lacks the chances of success," President Assad said in an October 11 interview with two Tunisian newspapers. Later, Assad said his country will not participate unless Syria's territorial dispute with Israel is on the table. Other Arab states said their condition for participation is an Israeli settlement freeze. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Musa said on October 11 that the 22 members of his umbrella group will not participate unless there is a guaranteed timetable for final-status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Not doing so "was our mistake in the 1990s. We will not repeat it," Musa told the German Press Agency. Palestinian diplomats say that 36 countries have already agreed to attend (permanent members of the UN Security Council, members of the G-8, members of the Quartet and several Arab countries).

What: There is no known agenda for the meeting. Apparently, the main objective is for the international community, and particularly the Arab states, to endorse the Olmert-Abbas document and pledge their support for future bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Beyond that, there have been no credible reports of potential agenda items for the conferees. What will categorically not be discussed there, according to Olmert, is Israel's conflict with Syria.

The document: given the key role that the Olmert-Abbas document will play in summit (both Israeli and Palestinian diplomats said that there will not be a conference without a document), there is a great deal of reporting - much of it seems like spin, manipulation or just guesswork - about the nature and content of the statement that the two sides are drafting. Olmert and Abbas had several meetings in which they reached understandings on the general outlines of the proposed document. When the talks were still one-on-one there was but a trickle of information about the content, particularly in the Israeli press. Now, however, after the drafting assignment was handed over to staffers, the trickle has turned into a flood of contradictory accounts in which spin and jockeying abound.

On October 12, the Israeli daily Maariv published a report attributed to a "member of the Palestinian negotiating team" saying that Olmert accepted most of the principles that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators worked out in Taba in 2000. He did not elaborate. "The gaps remaining are not large," the Palestinian diplomat was quoted as saying. The Palestinian diplomat may have been referring to the specific maps that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators sketched out in Taba to determine the future boundaries of the West Bank and the regions, within Israel, that would be swapped in return to West Bank settlement blocs, which Israel would like annex.

An October 12 Reuters report said that while the two sides have advanced in negotiations over the future borders of the Palestinian state, they are still far from agreement in principle on the two other contentious final-status issues of Jerusalem and refugees.

That report seems closer to the truth. Reports in the Israeli and Palestinian press indicate significant differences both regarding the nature of the document - the Palestinians seek a joint statement detailing the outlines of a final status accord while Israel is pushing for a more vague statement of intent.

In accordance with their more conservative approach, Israeli politicians are trying to lower expectations from the Annapolis summit. They insist that negotiations over the document have produced very little so far. "The negotiating teams have just started meeting and we are at a preliminary stage," a senior source in the Prime Minister's Office told the Jerusalem Post on October 11. "It is very premature to talk about the details of anything," according to the source.

While Israeli diplomats are trying to contain the hype surrounding the document and the summit, Palestinian politicians are doing the opposite. Several have already warned that failure in Annapolis will produce a third intifada. The veteran Palestinian chief negotiator, Ahmad Kurei (abu-Alaa) told the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth on October 12: "We have all climbed up a tall tree - the Palestinians, the Israelis, and the Americans. If we don't succeed in formulating a joint document to bring to the conference, we will all crash." Optimists would say that Kurei was echoing the sentiment that the newly-appointed chief of the Israeli negotiating team, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni expressed in her October 1 U.N General Assembly speech. "There is a new moment of opportunity, and an alliance of interest that favors peace. Time is of the essence. We owe it to ourselves and to our children to find both the courage and the wisdom to make the right choices in the right way," Livni said there.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, briefing reporters on her way to another Mideast visit October 14, expressed a similar sentiment of high-stakes opportunity and risk. "We do have to keep this moving forward," she said, "I think some intensity now is a good thing." Rice pointed out that "you got the broadest possible Israeli agreement that a Palestinian state was in Israel's interest. I don't think we've ever been there before." As she arrived in Jerusalem she signaled that she intends to capitalize on that broad Israeli agreement. On October 14, immediately after meeting with Olmert in Jerusalem, Rice held meetings with the three of the most vocal opponents to discussions on "core issues" in his cabinet: Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Minister for Strategic Threats Avigdor Lieberman, Finance Minister Roni Bar-On and Minister of Industry and Trade Eli Yishai. Rice reportedly told Yishai that "only dealing with the core issues will bolster the diplomatic process."


Annapolis Countdown is a weekly publication of Americans for Peace Now, prepared by Ori Nir. Americans for Peace Now is a Jewish, Zionist organization dedicated to enhancing Israel's security through peace and to supporting the Israeli Peace Now movement. For more information, please contact APN at (202) 728-1893.