Long Live Annapolis!

The invitations have gone out. There will be an Amercan-sponsored Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, next Tuesday, the first such gathering in seven bloody years and four months.

The International Crisis Group's excellent “policy briefing” issued yesterday on Annapolis makes a convincing case for why Condi Rice's efforts are serious and significant, and how the conference can be turned into a meaningful step toward peace. The ICG is not blind to the difficulties; to the contrary, in agonizing detail it describes the political weakness of Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and their utter failure to come up with a pre-conference understanding on the contours of a peace agreement—including the “final-status” issues like borders, Jerusalem and refugees. Yet, with the help of the ICG's analysis, it's worth taking stock of what has been accomplished and how this progress provides an opportunity that should not be minimized or missed.

I haven't been alone in expressing skepticism about Rice's peace push or about her past excuses for the Bush administration's appalling neglect of its international responsibility to uphold the peace process between 2001-2006. But it's thanks almost entirely to Rice's diplomacy that the administration has in fact dramatically and properly changed its basic approach to the conflict and now appears, in the ICG's words, “committed to an intensive effort.”

Once, an administration driven by neo-conservative ideologues believed that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute was fighting the authoritarian rot in the Arab world that they believe produces hatred for the U.S. and Israel in the form of the 9/11 attacks and suicide bombings against Israelis. Rice has shifted the challenge back to where it should have remained: addressing the injustice experienced by Palestinians in their expulsion from what became Israel in 1948 and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Palestinian territories since 1967.

Maybe when Rice writes her memoirs well learn more about how she prevailed against the neo-cons, but it has been clear, as the ICG notes, that the Annapolis idea “brought to the fore latent tensions within the administration.” The ICG says that Rice's opponents were “far more skeptical of any political breakthrough and preferred sticking to the strict sequential approach: first the Palestinians must reform their institutions and their ways, then they can discuss politics.” Indeed, there's plenty of evidence for that.

In a statement in July when Bush announced the Annapolis plan, then-White House press secretary Tony Snow downplayed its importance. “I think a lot of people are inclined to try to treat this as a big peace conference,” he said. “It's not. This is a meeting to sit down and try to find ways of building fundamental and critical institutions for the Palestinians that are going to enable them to have self-government and democracy.” In May, the Forward quoted hawkish White House Middle East advisor Elliott Abrams telling Jewish groups that Rice's diplomacy was “just process” and that Bush would put an “emergency brake” on any Arab or European attempts to “put Israel in a corner.” In a major speech before a pro-Israel group just a month before Annapolis, Vice President Cheney chose to focus on “the ideological struggle that's playing out in the Middle East today-- the struggle against radical extremists” and devoted all of three sentences in a 5,000-word speech to Rice's efforts and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His references reflected the administration's long-dominant neo-con approach, emphasizing that that Annapolis was designed “to review the progress towards building Palestinian institutions” and “seek innovative ways to support further reform” with no mention of Israel's need to accommodate Palestinian rights and interests.

Rice is now in control of the Arab-Israeli file (just as she is, I'm reliably told, of the Iran policy as well). In contrast to Cheney's thinking, Rice is decrying Israel's occupation, arguing, as she said in a Nov. 4 speech in Jerusalem, that “the prolonged experience of depravation and humiliation can radicalize even normal people.” (In his July 16 statement announcing the plans for Annapolis, Bush also, twice, termed Israel's presence in the West Bank an “occupation.”) Rice is also bluntly warning Israelis that they need a two-state solution, not to do Palestinians a favor, but for their own national wellbeing. She's warning them that time is running out on moderate Palestinians who are willing to forgo the aim of conquering all the land they believe they lost in '48 and '67 and accept a historical, compromise deal. “My fear,” she said at that same dinner, “is that if Palestinian reformers cannot deliver on the hope of an independent state, then the moderate center could collapse forever and the next generation of Palestinians could become lost souls of unbridled extremism.” In a perhaps unintended repudiation of her own administration's six-year disengagement from the peace process, Rice went out of her way to praise the Clinton administration's “extraordinary efforts” in peacemaking.

Another achievement is that Rice has mobilized the full authority of her high office in her mediation effort, doing the dirty work herself on eight Middle East missions in 11 months. She shunned delegating to some special envoy, who could take the fall if the high-risk gamble fails. And quite possibly because of her intense personal involvement, she managed to get Israeli PM Olmert and Palestinian President Abbas to agree to negotiate final status issues—“no mean feat after years of diplomatic paralysis and violent conflict,” as the ICG puts it.

The ICG notes some other positive signs as well, largely products of Rice's efforts. Prodded by Rice to begin exploratory talks last January, the ICG notes that “Abbas and Olmert seemingly share a personal bond, common purpose and desperate need for success. Their talks have exceeded in substance anything between past Israeli and Palestinian leaders.” Both men have set their own informal deadline for reaching an agreement—the end of Bush's term in office. Avoiding a widely understood fault in Clinton's negotiating strategy, Rice has actively sought the support of Arab states in the peace process. Indeed, from the days when Israel was wary of the Arabs as a bloc and preferred a divide and conquer approach to negotiations, it is Olmert who seems most desperate to have Saudi and Syrian participation at Annapolis. The Arabs are not happy that Olmert has not made more pre-conference gestures, but they'll show up.

Though pointing out that perceived failure at Annapolis could discredit both leaderships, while further undermining faith in diplomacy and the two-state solution, the ICG also notes that Rice, however belatedly, has launched a process that is still well ahead of the timetable that occurred during the Clinton years. The group notes that Clinton mediation became bogged down in the “confidence-building” process and turned to brokering a final-status agreement with only six months left in his presidential term. “Not only does the Bush administration have more time to achieve its objectives, but little need be wasted determining how to do so,” the ICG says. “Annapolis comes six months earlier in Bush's tenure, and the parties do not start from scratch.”

Rice has now proved that she's in this to succeed. She seems to have been galvanized into her own re-think of the Middle East crisis by her disastrous handling of Israel's attack on Lebanon in the summer of 2006; as images of dead children filled the world's TV screens, she called the war “the birth pangs of a new Middle East” and stubbornly refused to demand an Israeli cease-fire.

Many questions remain over how committed Bush is to backing Rice up. It's also not entirely clear that Rice understands there will be no success if the outcome is not a viable Palestinian state that satisfies the need for sovereignty and dignity—as opposed to a Bantustan that some people call a “state”--and that further pressure on Israeli political leaders and assurances for an anxious Israeli public will be necessary to make that happen. There's also a question whether Rice will show fortitude when the going really gets tough. Will she take her eye off the ball as Clinton did—the ball being a final settlement of the dispute—at the first sign of trouble from violent opponents of peace?

Much may depend on how Rice proceeds the “day after” Annapolis, how she handles the three challenges that the ICG identifies as factors that led to Clinton's ultimate failure at Camp David seven years ago: The U.S. needs to closely supervise the negotiations and introduce bridging proposals as necessary; encourage and ensure that negotiations are accompanied by rapid, visible changes on the ground, such as a freeze in Israeli settlements and Palestinian restoration of law and order; and seek the inclusion of rather than triumph over important stakeholders like Syria and Hamas.

If Annapolis fails to produce a deal before Bush leaves office, the worst-case scenario is that Rice's fears about collapse and extremism come to pass. If she sustains her efforts, she'll achieve a different legacy: in putting American diplomacy back in the service of negotiating a just, honorable Middle East settlement, she will have made it easier for the next secretary of state to carry on until that mission is accomplished.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo