Annapolis: The Spoiler Question

Despite the lack of concrete results and lowered expectations for early breakthroughs, the Annapolis peace conference has to be considered a historic event. It's the first multilateral meeting that includes the Israelis and the main Arab parties since the Madrid conference sessions in the early 1990s. It's the first international meeting between the Israelis and Palestinians in a peace conference setting since the Camp David talks in the summer of 2000. My sources say that quick follow up meetings are planned, which is an encouraging sign that Annapolis won't be a mere photo op. There will be another meeting between Israelis and Palestinians in the U.S., and one between Israelis and Syrians in Russia, if all goes well.

Especially since the process is so fragile, and the main negotiators so politically weak, a key question now is whether the anti-negotiations bloc--Hamas, but also Hizballah and their Iranian backers--will play a spoiler role. A single Hamas suicide bomb attack in a Tel Aviv restaurant, or another border war with Hizballah, could quickly shift the focus from peace to security. Indeed, the Oslo Accords signed in 1993 were largely derailed three years later precisely by such violence, a Hamas campaign of suicide bombings and intense Israeli-Hizballah clashes in southern Lebanon. The upshot was an electoral defeat for then Prime Minister Shimon Peres, a strong advocate of a negotiated solution, and victory for the Likud party's hard-line candidate, Benjamin Netanyahu.

One way to defeat the spoilers, of course, is to just ignore their attempts, as hard as they may be to do politically, if they strike out with violence. Many believe that progress in the peace negotiations will bolster the political strength of the peacemakers. But there's a feeling in some quarters that at least some of the opponents can be neutralized through engagement, including with Hamas. Although the fundamentalist group won the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, the U.S. and other countries have sought to embargo it until it recognizes past Israeli-Palestinian agreements and renounces violence.

A surprising call to engage Hamas came from the 75 or so "wisemen/women" who wrote a pre-conference letter to President Bush and Condi Rice, including retired senior U.S. officials or Middle East experts like Brent Scowcroft, Thomas Pickering and William Quant, American Jewish peace advocates like Rita Hauser and a former Israeli peace negotiator Shomo Ben-Ami. "We believe that a genuine dialogue with the organization is far preferable to its isolation," they wrote. "It could be conducted, for example, by the UN and Quartet Middle East envoys. Promoting a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza would be a good starting point."

They went on: "If Syria or Hamas is ostracized, prospects that they will play a spoiler role increase dramatically. This could take the shape of escalating violence from the West Bank or from Gaza, either of which would overwhelm any political achievement, increase the political cost of compromises for both sides, and negate Israel's willingness or capacity to relax security restrictions. By the same token, a comprehensive cease-fire or prisoner exchange is not possible without Hamas's cooperation. And unless both sides see concrete improvements in their lives, political agreements are likely to be dismissed as mere rhetoric, further undercutting support for a two-state solution."

In a Friday Op-Ed in the Washington Post, Israeli Knesset member, former Justice Minister and ex-peace negotiator Yossi Beilin called on the Israeli government to seek a cease-fire with Hamas, which he described as a "religiously fanatical organization that has used the worst kind of terrorist violence against Israelis," as soon as possible.

Beilin says a deal would include "the total cessation of mutual violence; arrangements at the border to allow goods and services to pass in and out of the Gaza Strip; the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier abducted in June 2006; and a commitment by Hamas to prevent all attempts to undermine next week's meeting in Annapolis and the resulting process."

He explained: "Hamas's control of Gaza gives it a political and geographical platform from which to disturb -- even to spoil -- any peace talks. Already Hamas permits the constant firing of Qassam rockets into Israel, and it threatens to carry out suicide bombings inside Israel. If it continues to be sidelined, Hamas will probably try to thwart the upcoming meeting in Annapolis, and the process the participants hope to ignite, by escalating the violence to such a degree that the parties will find it difficult even to meet, let alone negotiate peace. In other words, precisely because Israel and the PLO are ready to sit down and talk, Hamas cannot be ignored. Unfortunately, a broad coalition has formed of those who believe that it not only can be ignored but should be."

Saudi Arabia is still keen to revive the Mecca Agreement that it brokered between the pro-negotiations Fatah party and Hamas, which recently undermined the deal by staging by taking military control over Gaza. When I asked Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal on Sunday night how Hamas could be included in a peace process given its rejection of Israel's legitimacy as a state, he effectively argued that Hamas would have no choice but go along with a successful outcome. "You are entering into negotiations where there is a group of Israelis who say they don't want Palestinians in their land and want a Jewish homeland only," he said. "You have that kind of position on both sides. We hope reasonable people, people of peace and good faith, will win the day."

Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous Alliance--The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the U.S., makes a case that even Iran could be persuaded to play a constructive role-- at the price of recognizing the Tehran regime's role in the region. He argues that Iran managed to play a spoiler role after the 1991 Madid peace conference at a time when U.S. influence was high in the region and Iran's was low, and now the tables are turned.

"Excluding Iran from regional diplomacy fuels rather than diminishes Tehran's propensity to act the spoiler," Parsi told me on the eve of Annapolis. "Rather than pursuing an already failed policy, Washington should use the carrot of Iranian inclusion to win much needed behavioral changes from Tehran." He notes that Iran attended U.S.-driven international conferences on Afghanistan and Iraq.

He went on:

"Iran has acted quite constructively when included--see its role in Afghanistan in helping the US for instance. Iran's key aim is to regain a position of preeminence in the Middle East. It's not a position Iran can grab--its a position it needs to be granted. It needs buy-in from its neighbors and from the U.S. The U.S. has already branded the conference as an effort to create an anti-Iranian alliance. If peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians was at the center and the U.S. had invited Iran, then the ball would be in Iran's court. It would be a win-win for the U.S. If Iran declined and the rest of the region attended, then the U.S. would still look good. If Iran accepted, then significant foreign policy changes could be demanded from Iran."

Parsi underscores an essential point: peace in the Middle East will require a comprehensive, inclusive approach. As satisfying as it would be in some quarters to achieve triumph over opponents, that approach has failed with horrific consequences.

--By Scott MacLeod/Paris