Annapolis and Beyond: What (Not) to Expect

The Annapolis Summit will take place on 27 November 2007. The pre-game analyses are setting the pace, weighing-in the tattered patchwork conference, which has finally been scheduled as a one-day event.

The Israel Project describes itself as an international non-profit “devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel while promoting security, freedom and peace.” TIP hosted, on 20 November, a trio of truthsayers that included David Wurmser – “one of the Vice President’s most dedicated neoconservative spear-carriers” – and journalist Shmuel Rosner – who “began his career in 1987 as a producer and editor with Israeli Army Radio” and has been described by blogger Richard Silverstein as “one of the U.S. Israel Lobby’s best friends in the Israeli media.” They were joined by Tamara Cofman Wittes – Senior Fellow with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, which according to Source Watch:

is a research organization established at the Brookings Institution in 2002 through the donation of nearly $13 million by the Israeli media-mogul Haim Saban. Its current director is the veteran pro-Israel lobbyist Martin Indyk, who had earlier founded the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an AIPAC spinoff, to counter the Brooking Institution which was seen as not pro-Israel enough.

TIP’s event, the National Press Club Forum on Annapolis Peace Talks, seemed designed to counter a forum held earlier in the day, Annapolis and Beyond: What (Not) to Expect, co-sponsored by the New America Foundation and the International Crisis Group. The Washington Note blogger and director of the New America Foundation’s Foreign Policy Programs, Steve Clemons, moderated veteran negotiators Daniel Levy and Ghaith al-Omari of the New America Foundation (the pair have been on a speaking tour) and Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group. The same NAF/ICG panelists co-authored, Ten Commandments for Mideast Peace, published in June 2007.

Both forums were broadcast live by C-Span, and archived there. The NAF video can also be viewed on YouTube.

Clemons also promoted, ‘Failure Risks Devastating Consequences‘, a letter sent to Bush and Rice on 10 October, signed by Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski and others, published 8 November by the New York Review of Books.

The letter recommends, according to Clemons:

1.) An international conference should deal with the substance of a permanent peace.

2.) A conference should not be a one-time affair.

3.) A conference should produce results relevant to the daily lives of Israelis and Palestinians.

The letter also proposes that inclusiveness of neighbouring states such as Syria, and the creation of vehicles to end the isolation of Hamas, are key components to a comprehensive solution.

Ghaith al-Omari opened with what not to expect – a breakthrough document on permanent status – as the summit is an exercise in mismanagement and most are now playing defense due to artificially-raised expectations.

Since people have lost faith in the process, Omari continued, it is more important than ever that new elements be introduced. 1.) A series of summits is necessary. 2.) The Arab states must be part of the process but this should not be a requirement since gradual involvement will come as progress is made. 3.) Keep the focus on the end-game – permanent status – attention has a habit of straying from it and moving towards incremental issues.

Clemons interjected that “civil war is an understatement” for the conflict between Hamas and Fatah. How can final status be negotiated?

Omari described the situation as a “realisation of the collapse of the moderates.” Former PLO representative and adviser to Mahmoud Abbas, Omari is a lawyer who graduated Georgetown and Oxford. He brushed aside the divide, proclaimed that PLO has the address and Abbas can legally negotiate on behalf of all Palestinians. He went on to say that problems lie not in negotiations but in implementation.

The hierarchy that Omari advocates places the wishes of Israelis above the concerns of Palestinians who support Hamas. His jingoistic parsing of ‘moderates’ reveals nothing much is new about his game plan. It’s unconscionable this dichotomy is being repackaged as a new element conceived to replace failed strategies, but expected in any event.

The process remains a study in organised chaos. The scapegoating of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas for decades of failure to end the occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is emblematic of the underlying mechanism rigged to derail success.

The suffering of the Palestinian people will not be addressed at this conference or any convention it might spawn.

Omari and his fellows support final status that denies Palestinians the right of return: “a solution to the refugee problem that addresses the importance and legitimacy-conferring role of the exact language used, but whose practical implication will be that refugees can return to the territory of the Palestinian state, not Israel, while providing meaningful financial compensation and resettlement assistance; and security mechanisms that can address Israeli concerns, while respecting Palestinian sovereignty.”

Robert Malley began his presentation by saying that the letter is noteworthy, despite some outdated content, because the gist and who signed it send a very clear signal – there is greater room for a more pro-active, bold and inclusive U.S. policy in the Middle East than is often assumed.

One-third full, two-thirds empty, is his opinion of Annapolis. The good news? This is the first time in seven years that final status issues have been discussed at some level; Palestinian and Israeli leaders are “deeply committed” to negotiating final status and are willing to bypass the implementation of pre-conditions. In the preparation stages for months, Annapolis is described as a launching event, Malley said, so it can be viewed as failure-proof and success-proof.

No wonder the system is bankrupt – “Humanitarian concerns aside”

Malley stated, “humanitarian concerns aside” it is “wishful thinking” to believe that Palestinians, suffocated by sanctions, will rise up against Hamas. Malley has admitted that humanitarian concerns are not the point of these negotiations, and are not the reason he is opposed to sanctioning the Palestinians for electing and supporting Hamas. He doubts that peace can be built on the back of Palestinian disunity, but offers no remedy for U.S. and Israeli arming of the conflict, only warns that the strategy undermines Israeli security.

Ben White writes in the The Peace Paradigm:

A new peace paradigm is needed that does not see the conflict through the lens of the coloniser. Security, self-defense and self-determination are Palestinian rights denied daily by Israel. A peace process worth the name would include recognition of Palestine’s ‘right to exist’ and concrete steps on how to enforce this.

Malley believes the U.S. should stop discouraging Israel from negotiating with Syria.

Why does Malley believe that Israel will negotiate with Syria if not discouraged by the U.S.?

According to Aaron David Miller: “We couldn’t see it at the time, but Geneva [the March 2000 final Clinton meeting with Asad] was a dress rehearsal for what was to come at Camp David. . . . So you [Barak] put down an offer that your interlocutor cannot accept, you hope the Americans can sell it to him, but if they can’t you then go ahead and blame and expose the other side” (p. 353). With, Miller might have added, American acquiescence, as occurred when Clinton broke his promise not to blame Arafat if the talks failed.

What then happened or did not happen at Camp David, and why? How does this account square with previous renditions and the propaganda line of Arafat’s responsibility for failure? A basic problem, stressed by Swisher and many of his sources — Israeli, Palestinian and American — is that there was no record made of the discussions and “offers” exchanged. This, coupled with the disarray and tensions within the U.S. delegation, meant that in essence the talks restarted each day with Clinton taking his lead from Barak.

Should the Israelis just stay home? I’ll let Daniel answer that….

Daniel Levy believes one must unlock the I/P issue in order to secure Israel. An inclusive peace process would radically re-balance the region’s dynamic. In a sense, the American administration is beginning to reconnect the Middle East dots.

I think these professional negotiators are so grateful to have a play date the results of any such conference are secondary to their glee at finally meeting again.

They claim to support a letter that recommends vehicles for including Hamas in the negotiations should be created yet deploy bulldozers with engines revved, ready to bury the organisation and its followers in the grave of Annapolis.

Clemons blames Iran for the failure of Annapolis. No inclusiveness for Syria at this time! No inclusiveness for Hamas at this time! But having Annapolis as a date is nonetheless essential for the players.

Malley: It seems we’ve gone from one zero-sum game to another. Maybe people always need an enemy to be motivated? The evil Shia loom but historic breakthroughs are not possible in a climate of Us vs. Them.

So where should the weight for shifting this paradigm fall? Who has the real leverage? Rather than demand inclusiveness or offer constructive argument for it, these poseurs undermine their alleged proposal by deploying terror-speak terms. Is it not emblematic that they’ve determined the impetus for any such conventions to be Israel’s security?

Israelis are taking out second passports, Levy warns.

The strong Islamist current on the Palestinian side cannot be willed away.

AIPAC took a “constructive” stance on Annapolis. Gosh, what did they have to lose?

Annapolis has “broken the dam” on discussing the need for peace discussions. Ignore efforts by Hamas to negotiate, cast them in the role of spoiler, then act forlorn when Hamas withdraws the mandate for Abbas to negotiate is a breakthrough?

Who will mention Israel’s acts of sabotage?

Omari finally mentions that Hamas has encountered road blocks to governing since their election then describes it as a power struggle between Fatah and Hamas. He agrees that Hamas cannot be “brought down” militarily or with a “popular uprising.” He acknowledges interference by external elements such as the U.S., EU, etc. in the process.

Malley basically defends the interference, because Palestinians cannot recognise a good partner without it.

What comes first, the chicken or the egg, the orientalism or the land grab, the process or the spoiler?

Levy warns that Hamas must not be allowed to become the spoiler, so actors willing to get in a room with Hamas should be encouraged. Perhaps, Levy should not discourage such a meeting with his constant demonising of Hamas.

To sum up, if something positive comes of this convention it is due the U.S./Israeli superior skills of accomodation. Failure? Blame it on the saboteurs, the anti-American terrorists of the day.

Levy avers that everyone has “bought into” the siege on Gaza in order to sour Palestinians on Hamas, but most damning of all is that Arab leaders ignore their plight as well.

Eli Lake: Why should the international community be rewarding the “coup” in Gaza? Malley states, no worries, America will never talk to Hamas. Back channels only.

Clemons: All hail the moderates!

The new paradigm is infested with the same poisonous buzzwords, the same diversionary rhetoric. “We All Have Our Liebermans” jokes Levy. Must we review Labor’s record on settlement expansion once again?

Eli Lake attended the TIP conference as well, where he referred to the New America Foundation’s ‘morning’ conference as a joke-fest that pushed the ignorance of Brent Scowcroft, specifically the inclusion of Hamas in the process. Tamara Cofman Wittes grabbed the baton and battered Hamas with the usual lies and more lies. David Wurmser revised pre-Israel history framing Arabs then and forever more as genetically defective partners in peace.

Who is erecting the ideological barriers to peace?

Phyllis Bennis notes:

If the U.S.-Israeli goals for Annapolis are realized, they would probably lead to the following “two-state solution” results:

Borders
A Palestinian “state” would be announced on a series of non-contiguous truncated Bantustan-like cantons comprising something less than 50% of the West Bank plus Gaza. Israel might, with great fanfare, charitably “adjust” very slightly the current route of the Apartheid Wall to seize slightly less land that the current route (which Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni earlier announced would be the basis for any border). All of the West Bank’s major water aquifers will remain on the Israeli side of the Wall.

Settlements
All the major West Bank settlement blocs would remain intact on the Israeli side of the Wall, leaving between 180,000 and 200,000 of the current 250,000 West Bank settlers in place. With great fanfare most of the 105 small symbolic “outpost” settlements constructed since 2001, which together house only about 2000 settlers, will be dismantled. The entire Jordan Valley would remain in Israeli hands. In exchange, Palestinians would be offered a “land swap” which would almost certainly involve a significantly smaller amount of land, of far less arability and viability.

Refugees
The Palestinian right of return, codified not only in general international law but specifically in UN resolution 194 (1949), has already been officially rejected by Israel but also by the United States, in the Bush-Sharon letter exchange of April 2004. Israel’s Annapolis agenda plans to reassert that rejection though a demand that the Palestinians accept language recognizing the “Jewish character” of Israel, or accepting the definition of Israel as “the state of the Jewish people” as opposed to a state of its own citizens. So far Palestinian officials have indicated they will not accept that language, which Israeli Prime Minister Olmert says is a precondition to any negotiations. The rejection of the right of return will be further entrenched by an Israeli “offer” to Palestinian refugees the privilege of “returning” to the erstwhile new “Palestinian state,” rather than the right to return to their actual home territory inside what is now Israel.

Jerusalem
International law (UN Security Council resolution 181, which divided Palestine into what was supposed to become a Jewish and an Arab state) calls for Jerusalem to belong to neither state, but rather to be a “separate body” under international jurisdiction. Virtually no governments (not even the U.S.) recognize Israel’s annexation of occupied Arab East Jerusalem, and numerous UN resolutions have reaffirmed that East Jerusalem is occupied territory. The Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem (known as neighborhoods, not settlements) include over 200,000 Israeli settlers, and they will remain in Israeli hands. The Israeli position in Annapolis will call for continuing Israeli control of all of Jerusalem, with some kind of Israeli-controlled “autonomy” for Palestinian neighborhoods and parts of the Old City’s Muslim shrines.

If the U.S.-Israeli agenda for Annapolis succeeds with an official Palestinian imprimatur, the already reduced legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority could diminish further, and the existing Palestinian political crisis, especially the Fatah-Hamas divide, could be seriously exacerbated. It is important to remember that the U.S. as well as Israel bear significant responsibility for the divisions, tensions and violence inside the Palestinian polity. In his leaked confidential report, former UN representative to the so-called Quartet, Peruvian diplomat Alvaro de Soto stated directly that “the U.S. clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas – so much so that, a week before Mecca [the Saudi-brokered unity agreement between the two factions], the U.S. envoy declared twice in an envoys meeting in Washington how much ‘I like this violence,’ referring to the near-civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured, because ‘it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas’.”