What hopes for Annapolis?

Israel and the Palestinian Authority have failed to come to an agreement on a joint statement for next weeks Annapolis summit searching for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Hamas' Gaza leader, Ismail Haniyeh, has already predicted that the summit will be stillborn and achieve nothing for the Palestinians.

"We realize that this conference was stillborn and is not going to achieve for the Palestinian people any of its goals or any of the political and legal rights due to them," Haniyeh said outside the Palestinian parliament building in Gaza City.

Haniyeh said Abbas did not have the mandate to make compromises in talks with Israel, especially over the demand of Palestinian refugees to return with their families to homes in Israel they lost during the 1948 War of Independence.

"No one is authorized to compromise or to give up any of these rights, especially the right of return," Haniyeh said.

Haniyeh also called on Abbas not to cave in to a recent Israeli demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. "We do not recognize that this state is Jewish," Haniyeh said.

Israelis are also deeply negative about the chance of peace coming from this conference and about Olmert's legitimacy to conduct the negotiations:

Polls published yesterday showed most Israelis support Annapolis but few expect results. According to one poll, published by the Ma'ariv newspaper, up to 50% of the Israeli public think Olmert has no mandate to negotiate with the Palestinians because of his unpopularity over last year's war in Lebanon and the alleged corruption scandals that surround him.

So Bush is assembling a group of people that the Palestinians didn't vote for and an Israeli Prime Minister who is so low in the polls that it's hard to imagine how he could be less popular.

And yet. the Bush administration have managed to persuade the Saudis to send a delegation to Annapolis, which is something of a coup.

The US-brokered Annapolis peace conference was given a significant boost yesterday when heavyweight Saudi Arabia decided to send its foreign minister to the launch of the first peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians in seven years. Syria, Israel's most implacable Arab enemy, signalled that it was now also likely to attend.

Prince Saud al-Faisal said he would be taking part in next Tuesday's Maryland summit as part of an Arab "consensus" of support for the Palestinians - despite near-universal gloom about the prospects of agreement on the toughest issues.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, had urged fellow Arab leaders to come to Annapolis, arguing that there were prospects of meaningful negotiations with Ehud Olmert of Israel on the creation of a Palestinian state within a year. "We have a historic opportunity," Abbas told reporters in Cairo. "We are hoping that we will be together at the conference discussing all tracks, the Palestinian-Israeli track, the Syrian-Israeli track and the Lebanese track."

Saudi Arabia, home to the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina as well as a quarter of world oil reserves, is Washington's closest ally in the Arab world. Its presence guarantees wide, if sceptical, Arab support for George Bush's initiative.

I would love nothing more than for a peace deal to come from this conference, but I remain highly sceptical about the legitimacy of Abbas to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians, as he is not their democratically elected representative.

Likewise, Israel's ludicrous insistence that the Palestinians must recognise Israel as a "Jewish" state appears to me to be a way of removing the subject of "right to return" from the table before negotiations even begin. And, if Olmert is as insistent upon this as he's claiming to be, then the talks are simply a waste of time.

George Bush has ignored the Israeli-Palestine crisis more than any previous American President. Indeed, I find it hard to imagine any American President who was more pro-Israeli than Bush has been and more willing to stand aside and refuse to condemn some of Israel's more brutal attacks on the Palestinians over the past seven years.

His policy of allowing brute force to change things on the ground has resulted in abject failure, and succeeded only in splitting the Palestinians into a vicious civil war which has separated Gaza politically from the West Bank. Which was perhaps the point and is possibly why he has agreed to talks now between the unelected Abbas and Israel.

But, even with the involvement of the Saudis, one has to wonder how any deal made in such circumstances can have any legitimacy.

The Israeli public remain willing to make sacrifices in order to achieve peace, even if they remain deeply suspect of Olmert's reasons for attending Annapolis.

As Olmert flies to the US tomorrow, Israeli police will reveal whether they will bring charges against him in connection with a banking scandal. The Ma'ariv poll, which questioned 500 people, said 53% believed he was only going to Annapolis to improve his public standing, while 38% thought he wanted to make peace.

The same poll produced a mixed verdict on Abbas, with 48% saying they felt he wanted peace and 46% saying he did not. It found 56% of Israelis were in favour of evacuating some or all of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Ha'aretz newspaper has warned against the cynicism of people like myself:

"Even the cynics acknowledge that the broad outlines of a two state solution are known, clear and acceptable to the majority in both nations. The question, therefore, remains: if not at Annapolis - then where, and if not now - then when?"

And I would have to agree with that statement. We all know what the solution to this problem will look like. It is already spelled out in resolution 242. Israel must return to the pre-1967 borders and remove all illegal Israeli settlements.

Simple, eh? Then why am I so pessimistic that Israel will ever agree to this formula for peace which is accepted by every nation on the planet except Israel and the United States?

Tags: Israel, Palestine, Annapolis, Saudi Arabia, peace talks, Bush, Olmert, Abbas