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| At Annapolis: Palestinian Authority President Abbas (l.), President Bush, and Israeli Prime Minister Olmert (r.). Gerald Herbert/AP |
Mideast peace gets new push
Arabs and Israelis sat down formally together for the second time in history.
By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the November 28, 2007 edition
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ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Saying "now is precisely the right time to launch" negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians, President Bush told the Annapolis peace conference Tuesday that the choice now is stark: between peace based on two democratic states, and extremism and violence.
Mr. Bush was host to only the second occasion in history where Arabs and Israelis have formally sat together to discuss Middle East peace. He said peace can be achieved only if all the interested parties – the Israelis and Palestinians, as well as the Arab states and the international community – play their part.
But Bush emphasized that a successful peace accord would depend on whether the two main parties – Israel and a yet-to-be-created Palestine – are determined to get there. "The United States is proud to host this meeting," Bush said, "but in the end, [success] depends on the Israelis and Palestinians themselves. We cannot achieve [peace] for them."
Flanked by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Bush read what he called an "agreed statement" of "joint understanding" that laid out obligations for both sides. Seeking to build a certain momentum, Bush announced that the two sides would begin regular bilateral negotiations on Dec. 12. He said they would try to reach an accord by the end of next year.
Playing down any direct role for the US or any other outside party, Bush spoke of a "support role" for such parties. That tone suggests Annapolis could be the high-water mark for the president's involvement in the peace process if the Israelis and Palestinians are unable to push forward on their own.
It may or may not be an irony of history that the first meeting drawing Arabs and Israelis to the same table was the Madrid conference in 1991 during the presidency of George H.W. Bush.
The current president squelched the idea of a conference when former Secretary of State Colin Powell proposed one in 2002. Now, Stephen Zunes, a Middle East expert at the University of San Francisco, suspects that Bush's reasons for blessing the idea have more to do with generally addressing conditions in the Middle East region.
"It's mainly to show the Arab world that despite the mess in Iraq and the threats against Iran, we're still concerned about the Palestinians and really do want to do something about it," he says. "But substantively, I'm hard pressed to see what's coming out of this," he adds – in part because he doesn't see Bush or his administration stepping in to really push the two sides to hard bargaining.
That conclusion is bolstered by statements from the president's own advisers. "The president's view has always been that we are not going to impose a negotiation on the parties and we're not going to impose a timetable on the parties just to reflect American politics or anything else," said Stephen Hadley, national security adviser to Bush, in comments to the press on the summit's eve.
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