Is peace at hand? The miracle Bush needs

U.S. President George W. Bush is stepping into what observers say is his most important diplomatic initiative of his presidency, inviting the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to give peace a change.


Peace at hand?

The test of his gamble comes Tuesday in Annapolis, Maryland where the Arab League will join representatives of Western nations in an effort to find solutions that have evaded politicians and diplomats for more than a generation.

Israeli and Palestinian leaders have already said they want to seal a deal in the 14 months that Bush has left in office.

But they are going into the talks without a clear blueprint. Israel is looking forward to continuing serious dialogue to see if peace is possible.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he's optimistic. So is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has stressed the need to address issues of Palestinian statehood, sticking points that have doomed previous peace efforts.

He is hoping the discussions will produce the basis for negotiating a permanent peace. The big questions that have doomed previous peace efforts won't be raised Tuesday; they would come later.

Some Bush administration insiders doubt that a settlement is possible in the short time frame and are not sure that Palestinians, in particular, are ready to make necessary concessions to establish an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Monday the administration is committed to moving the process forward but added that "ultimately, it's going to come down to the two parties and bridging the differences that now exist between them on all the issues that we know are out there."

The White House said Bush has asked the Israelis to "seize the moment." A spokesperson said the president told Olmert "history is full of missed opportunities because people just looked to the downside."

The Palestinian question underlies numerous other conflicts and grievances in the Middle East that have caused hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to be scattered across several Arab states.

That's why Bush fought so hard to get a strong Arab presence in Annapolis, including Syria and Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is attending only because Bush has given the assurance that Annapolis is more than a photo op and that he would remain "energetic about peace" after the cameras are gone.

The Saudis appear to be comfortable. According to Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, "When the president says I am fully backing this effort, I will use every resource, how can you not be confident?"

But he was careful to warn that the kingdom will not establish diplomatic ties with the Jewish state until after Palestinian and other territorial questions are settled.

With such intense diplomacy and key Arab states on board to support the Western enthusiasm for the talks, success might seem inevitable.

But this is the Middle East and the reality is on the ground, not inside a conference room full of men (and some women) in suits.

What about Hamas? The group is blacklisted in the West as a terrorist organization but has substantial support within the Palestinian community primarily because its politics includes delivering social services.

It won an election and formed a government that was promptly sabotaged by the West. Its position on the eve of the Annapolis talks is clear: President Mahmoud Abbas is a traitor and it would reject any decisions to come out of the conference.

And the grumbling is not coming from Gaza alone.

On Monday in Jerusalem, more than 20,000 Israelis gathered at the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, to protest the conference. Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu labeled the summit "a continuation of one-sided concessions."

And in Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech that the conference "has already failed" and that the U.S. was only trying to preserve its reputation.

The bottom line for Israel is that that the Palestinians fight terror in Hamas-ruled Gaza before any peace deal would be implemented.

And then there are the real long-standing disputes over final borders, sovereignty over disputed Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees who lost homes in the war that followed Israel's 1948 creation.

If peace is at hand, it must be a miracle.

Jai Parasram | Toronto, Nov. 26, 2007