Modest estimate about Much to be modest Annapolis Peace Sum

"Bush's brilliant brainstorm to hold a meaningless, lustreless peace conference is like dry lightning, which brings not the prayed for rain. The US administration needed something to prove that its policy towards the Arab region was not a drastic failure. It came up with nothing better than to restage the Madrid peace conference that was engineered by James Baker, secretary of state under Bush's father. For some reason, Republicans regard the Bush Sr-Baker policy following the war in Kuwait a success story worthy of commemoration and emulation. So we have a conference, today, that has brought the Arabs to Washington, flushed with gratitude to the imperial grace for bestowing its attention again upon the Palestinian cause.


But as Karl Marx observed with respect to Napoleon III, some historical events are repeated twice, once as tragedy and the second time as farce. Madrid set the scene for the formulation of negotiating tracks and the tragedy of Oslo, to which the Palestinian cause is still held hostage. With Annapolis, the curtains opened to farce. At first people thought that it was to be a conference, only to learn that it was to be an assembly. Then it was billed as a "meeting" and, finally, as an inauguration of a peace process, which is to say a negotiating process. But Madrid, too, turned out to be the inauguration of a negotiating process. How many negotiating process inaugurations can there be? How many times must pompous speeches, embellished with quotes from the Torah, inlaid with Quranic verses, bespangled with references to "our common father Abraham" and to the step- siblings Isaac and Ishmael, be delivered to specially prepared over air-conditioned halls crammed with delegations and journalists, all anticipating nothing, dying of boredom and passing their time pondering how they're going to recast the dullest, most innocuous ramblings into speeches that were "profound," "cohesive," "eloquent" or otherwise? What have the Arabs done from Madrid to the present day? They've negotiated. Why do we need another rhetoric orgy to introduce more of the same? Your guess is as good as mine. Of course, some say, or maintain (for those who think that the subject requires a soberer tongue that is not pressed into the cheek), that this time negotiations will be serious about creating a Palestinian state, that we are inaugurating a serious phase in the negotiations, that what we'll be seeing in the next eight months will make all the negotiations that have taken place up to now look like child's play. At least so the Palestinian negotiators promise themselves, even as Olmert counters this promise with the promise that he will not be bound to any timetable or deadline for concluding negotiations over a permanent solution.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/873/op55.htm

"Bush snubbed the Arab delegations that attended the meeting when he failed to make any reference to the 2002 Arab initiative, offering full normalisation with Israel in return for withdrawal to the 1967 borders, effectively draining their participation of any meaning. He then made matters worse by referring to his letter of guarantees sent to former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon as the most important reference point for the negotiations. The letter blocks the right of return, withdrawal to the 1967 borders and allows Israel to annex settlements built on occupied land. Syria, which was obliged to attend the meeting, was rewarded with no mention of the occupied Golan Heights in the speeches of either Bush or Olmert.

The subtexts to Bush's talk of "extremists" and the "forces of darkness", and Olmert's call for Arabs to participate with Israel in the war against fundamentalism, were clear to all, not least Dan Schueftan, head of the Israeli national security research centre. The Annapolis meeting, he said, had never been about resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, but was convened to pave the way for an American strike against Iran in cooperation with the Arabs and Israel."
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/873/fr1.htm

"The road to peace isn't through Annapolis nor can it be achieved without a willing partner or with the legitimate Palestinian government excluded.
Talks are futile as long Israel spurns peace, violates international law, attacks Palestinian civilians, seizes their land, destroys their homes, restricts their movements, conducts targeted assassinations, denies them essential services, and holds Gaza under a medieval siege in the world's largest open-air prison while blaming the victims."

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=14433

"The Annapolis meeting was designed to launch serious new negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians that aimed at ending the occupation and producing a just, lasting and comprehensive peace in the region based on a two-state solution.

In fact, the two main reasons for the conference had virtually nothing to do with Israel or Palestine. The real reasons for convening the conference were 1) to strengthen Arab government support for U.S. strategies in the Middle East, including the war in Iraq and particularly the escalation of pressure aimed at Iran. 2) To provide a photo-op to reframe Condoleezza Rice's legacy, now largely shaped by her embrace of Israel's bombardment of Lebanon in 2006, to the legacy of a would-be peacemaker.



Myth #2) The time is right for new talks because, as President Bush said, "Palestinians and Israelis have leaders who are determined to achieve peace."



In fact, both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders are so weakened politically, so compromised as legitimate leaders and so unpopular among their own electorates, that they have little or no choice but to follow the demands of the White House. Both Prime Minister Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Abbas were democratically elected, but both of them were chosen as replacements for the powerful and popular icons of national symbolism they served.



Like his predecessor, Yasir Arafat, Abbas is simultaneously president of the Palestinian Authority and Chairman of the PLO; unlike Arafat, he is not viewed as a hero of the Palestinian national movement and a symbol of Palestinian unity. I"
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=14426

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/projects/annapolis/index.html