I'm not sure that there ever really was a "Spirit of Annapolis," but if there was, it is gone by now. Annapolis: it seems so far away, but we will hear it evoked in a week or so, when President Bush makes his January 8-16 trip to Israel and the West Bank, his first - exactly one year before the formal end of his presidency. But if Annapolis was not an end in itself, at least its premise of a "launch pad" for further negotiations left some hope that quietly, once away from the media spotlight at the US Naval Academy, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators would be able to tackle the thorniest issues, those that have eluded American peacemakers from Jimmy Carter through Bill Clinton.
But this Christmas eve in the Holy Land, the reality on the ground is devoid of any Yuletide Cheer. Last week, veteran Middle East observer Helena Cobban in her excellent blog "Just World News" reported on behind-the-scenes developments showing that elements of the Israeli security establishment were open to overtures from - of all people - the Hamas leadership in Gaza. Now, we read that any such moves have been rejected by the Olmert government.
In my book, however, it's what you don't read about on page one that shows how the atmosphere may be irredeemably poisoned. The ink had barely dried on the Annapolis declaration when an Israeli plan to build hundreds of homes in disputed East Jerusalem leaked out. Here we are on Christmas Eve, when the stress is on last-minute shopping and End-of-Year messages, and the Israeli settlement plan is shown as even bigger, with more than 700 homes planned to settlements that are on land confiscated/"purchased" from Palestinians.
(Photo Source: BBC "Israel Confirms Settlement Plans")
Here's the problem: while Jerusalem - split by the 1949 UN Green Line, "reunited" (i.e., Arab East Jerusalem annexed by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War), whose municipal boundaries have been expanded by successive Israeli governments to include large swaths of Palestinian West Bank land - is evoked by the Palestinians as a "final status" issue, Israelis see the matter of Jerusalem as off the table. Now, in any land dispute, if I have a legitimate claim to my own property, but I happen to use your access road over the years, then I lay a formal claim to your road, put up "no entry" signs to keep you out, and shoot at you if you dare to reclaim your access road - this would eventually look bad for me in a property tribunal.
But the "tribunal" in this case is the court of international public opinion. Israel has created an industry of spin, trotting out a whole stable of multilingual (indeed, native speakers of important world languages) Israelis who are able to defend Israel's talking points in front of world media. On the Palestinian side, while there are some very able spokespersons, the split - between the Fatah/PLO leadership in the West Bank (Mahmoud Abbas, the "President of Ramallah," as some Israeli and Palestinian observers have called him) and the elected Hamas leadership in Gaza under Ismail Haniya - has weakened and diluted the Palestinian voice.
Last month, at a Brussels conference on the Mideast, moderate Israeli and Palestinian speakers despaired at the state of Palestinian Authority leadership (a "dead body" in the view of one observer, "corrupt" according to all). One former Israeli Army intelligence officer, Dr. Avraham Sela, now a respected academic at Hebrew University, made the case for inclusion of Hamas in the peace process. The biggest missing piece in Annapolis, many agreed, was the absence of Hamas. No "peace process" worthy of the name (or with even half a chance of success) can ignore the over half of the Palestinian population that is represented by Hamas.
So, on this Christmas Eve, it's really hard to be optimistic about peace prospects for the Holy Land. So let's wish the negotiators good luck, but keep in mind the question asked by peace processors more than a decade ago: "What Will Be Left to Negotiate?" Merry Christmas.