Anna-policy

Glenn Kessler reports that the current state of the Annapolis conference seems to be very up in the air.

“No one seems to know what is happening,” one senior Arab envoy said last week, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid appearing out of the loop. “I am completely lost.” The envoy recounted the calls he made in recent days to dig up information and said he had reserved rooms for his country’s foreign minister and other officials. He added with exasperation: “It is a very peculiar thing.” Even a senior administration official deeply involved in the preparations confided, before speaking off the record about his expectations: “I can’t connect the dots myself because it is still a work in progress.”

Maybe they hadn’t spoken to whomever Steven Erlanger spoke to.

The all-out push essentially speeds to the end of the now dormant 2003 “road map” for peace by insisting that the big issues once relegated to later discussion, like the status of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees, be addressed immediately, even before the Palestinians begin to dismantle terrorist groups and networks. Simultaneously, the Americans will push both sides to carry out their obligations as laid out in the first stage of the road map, involving complex security and settlement issues, American and Israeli officials say. To press for action, which would involve painful decisions on both sides, the Americans will choose a senior official with a background in security to monitor progress. In the words of a senior American diplomat, “We’ll be assiduously fair, and very tough, and if necessary we will be public,” so that failure will have consequences.

We know how that will work. When the Palestinians fail to stop teaching hate, or reining in terrorists and the United States objects, the Arab world and its supporters will accuse the United States of not supporting Palestinian aspirations and the matter will be dropped. If Israel fails to adhere to every particular about “settlements” it will precipitate a “diplomatic crisis” and perhaps even lead to a condemnation in the UN. In the end only one side cares about American approval and other is seeking American pressure.

Roger Cohen, though, hopes that something, no matter how insignificant, might work.

Hope is a shrinking refuge. Annapolis looks like a looming photo-op. Even photo-up-plus would be something at this stage.

However it seems he doesn’t think anything inconvenient ought to be discussed.

What matters are the two peoples. But even basic principles are problematic. One core demand of Olmert and his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, is for up-front Palestinian recognition of Israel “as a Jewish state.” But Saeb Erekat, a moderate Palestinian negotiator, has said that “Palestinians will never acknowledge Israel’s Jewish identity.”

Livni wants clarity on the Jewish character of Israel, which has a large Arab minority, as quid pro quo for recognition of Palestine and as insurance against mass Palestinian return. She’s right to want this; she’s wrong to push for the principle now. Why should Palestinians offer anything when the West Bank is a shameful place offering a primer on colonialism and Israeli settlements have grown almost unabated? Nascent Palestine is in pieces, invisible behind a reassuring fence-wall.

Well the reason that the Palestinians ought to offer recognition of a Jewish state is because it’s something that they supposedly committed to in order for the PLO to be certified as a reformed terror group. It’s something that should be the very basis of any other negotiations. If the Palestinians don’t accept that what more is there to discuss? Cohen asks:

Still, despair is a nonstarter, even if a minister in Olmert’s government is already voting for legislation to block any eventual division of Jerusalem. So what if Annapolis looks like Rice’s transparent, last-gasp bid for a “legacy achievement”?

Though Cohen’s question is rhetorical, In Diplomacy with the Devil, Danielle Pletka has an answer.

For example, in September Israeli jets destroyed what Israeli and American intelligence assessed to be a North Korean-built nuclear reactor in Syria. Officials who have seen the intelligence tell me the structure was the result of several years of transfers between North Korean nuclear suppliers and Syrian buyers. Ms. Rice’s most revealing comment? An explanation that “issues of proliferation do not affect the Palestinian-Israeli peace efforts we are making.”

This bizarre rationalization is oddly divorced from reality: how could Israel possibly be indifferent to its neighbors acquiring nuclear technology from America’s partner in the new agreed framework? The statement simply invites America’s adversaries to capitalize on the administration’s desperation. Why not engage in bad behavior if the Bush administration, like the Clinton administration, will look the other way?

By kowtowing to the conventional wisdom of what a secretary of state should do, Condoleezza Rice is making her legacy dependent on the future behavior of a North Korean tyrant and Palestinian pretenders. Ultimately, that will serve neither selfish nor national interests.

With “legacy” rather than results being the goal, the whole conference is about creating a Palestinian state or at least setting events into motion to make that a possibility sooner rather than later. If so, all other considerations and concerns will be sacrificed to that single goal. It’s a making of a diplomatic disaster. For all the talk of the lack of preparation, Erlanger includes a revealing word in this paragraph.

The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, who was prime minister at the failed Camp David talks of 2000, said he once told Ms. Rice, who studied in Denver, that from a distance, the Rocky Mountains looked like a wave on the landscape. “But up close,” he said, “they are real mountains.”

Camp David “failed” not because of a lack of effort. But because Arafat didn’t want a solution. There is no reason to assume that his successor is any more committed to peaceful coexistence with Israel. And yet the Americans now, seduced by the siren’s song of “legacy” will attempt to achieve the unachievable.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.