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| By Israel Insider staff November 18, 2007 |
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| No wedding in Annapolis? Rice being thrown out the "window of opportunity" |
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The Palestinians have backtracked on all understandings that were reached on a joint Israeli-Palestinian statement to be presented at the Annapolis peace conference, senior diplomatic officials were quoted by The Jerusalem Post as saying Sunday. According to the sources, the Palestinians have "returned to square one, to [a point that] preceded the beginning of the negotiations."
The implosion of Annapolis, as critics of the initiative have long warned, has become an imminent possibility, with a joint Israeli-Palestinian statement, expressing points of agreement, now being dismissed as highly improbable. The fallback position is that each side would present a separate statement was being weighed, officials said, but that would like highly the huge gap that separates the sides and might devolve into acrimony.
Just today Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told French FM Bernard Kouchner that "Annapolis cannot be a failure because its very existence constitutes a success." But if Annapolis serves only to polarize the sides, and entrench positions, what possible good could it do? And why would Israel be willing to making pre-conference concessions -- or "Confidence Building Measures" as they are called -- while the Palestinian side is reverting to the most extreme stances, including rejection of positions -- such as recognition of Israel as a Jewish state -- that Olmert and his foreign minister say are prerequistes for Israeli recognition of a Palestinian State. The only result would be to make Olmert and his government look like buffoons and serve only to undermine the diplomatic initiatives of Rice and the Bush administration.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams were slated to reconvene Sunday, with a meeting scheduled Monday between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is scheduled to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office, the Post reported, declined to respond to various Palestinian reports that "failure" at Annapolis would lead to Abbas's resignation or could possibly spark another round of terrorist violence.
"The meeting at Annapolis is the beginning of a process," one official said, hopefully. "It is the first time in seven years that the sides are openly having a dialogue that we hope will lead to a final settlement of some sort. Annapolis is the stepping-off point, and in that sense it is an important landmark, although the event itself is essentially a show of international support for the bilateral track."
That is called, in diplomatic parlance, whistling past the graveyard, as a ceremonial occasion to launch peace talks has deteriorated into a showcase of how far apart the Israeli and Arab positions really are. The deterioration can be traced to Israel's insistence that the Palestinians recognize Israel's character as a Jewish state, followed by the Palestinians staunch refusal to do so.
Exemplifying the Palestinian hardline stance, Yasser Abed Rabbo, member of PLO's executive committee, asserted that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can never be resolved without united Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. "Jerusalem is a united capital and is not subject for concessions," he told Voice of Palestine radio. His remarks were in response to Israeli demands that the Palestinian should make concessions in Jerusalem issue.
"Without Jerusalem, there will be no capital for the Palestinian statehood and there will be no solution.... this issue is not subject for talks or discussions," Abed Rabbo continued. He also criticized the attempts of Israeli right powers to issue laws from the Knesset legalizing steps to make Jerusalem Jewish. "These attempts are useless and will not succeed."
The questions begs answering whether Annapolis might also be so described. As the suggested conference date is but a week away, and no invitations have yet been issued, more and more seasoned diplomats are concluding that the Americans and Israelis, in their embrace of Abbas and the Palestinians, are not walking off a cliff. The question is whether one or both will postpone the Annapolis misadventure before it becomes a crippling and war-triggering fiasco. |
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