Commentary
Annapolis and the ‘merry-go-round’
By Dr. Marwan Asmar
Online Journal Guest Writer


Nov 26, 2007, 00:47

It is being described as a “merry-go-round” peace process, because it keeps going round and round with actors going on and off, but doesn’t lead anywhere. It has new faces all the time but it does not move on substance.

The latest peace conference on the Middle East due to be held in Annapolis on 27 November is seen as another brave but diluted attempt to put the peace process, which has been on a life support machine for the last seven years, back on track.

Annapolis is sort of a last ditch attempt by the Bush administration to tell the world, and probably the Arabs and the Palestinians especially, ‘we are trying, we are trying, but its is up to you guys, including of course the Israelis to sit together and sort out your differences.'

For the Bush administration Annapolis is a face-saving attempt to tell the Arabs to support US policy in Iraq, as if they really need to. Privately Washington knows the Arab world has long become the careless sick man of Europe, but argues a little pandering now and then would not do any harm.

It sends public blessings to the Israelis to carry on their business-as-usual with the Palestinians, while embroiling them in a continuous hand-shaking formula that means much political-speak but no practical action on the ground.

What we had is bloody aggression on Gaza and the West Bank and sent the Palestinians Orwellian messages that it is Israelis who are in the driving seat -- they who can rain death and destruction, and who set the peace agenda, emptied or not of its content.

And Israelis, led by their prime minister, Ehud Olmert and his foreign minister, Tipsi Livni, together with political-dinosaur Shimon Peres, do it with such a smile and convincing ability to the Americans and Europeans while constantly putting the Palestinians and other Arabs in a negative light.

Of course, their extra smiles to the media and US politicians this time around may just have to do with the fact they received such a stiff and often bloody resistance in their 2006 war in Lebanon from a slight organization like Hizbollah. But instead of capitalizing on such in this to push any meaningful peace process forward, the episode is quickly being forgotten in the collective mind of the Arab world.

That’s why Israelis are playing their cards closer to their chest and have been patiently weighing the diplomatic game, and that’s why Annapolis is likely to be seen as an extra palliative to the new political context which the region finds itself in.

Still, Annapolis will likely continue to be another staging post in what has become a series of major conferences and summits in the history of the peace process that started with the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991, went on to Oslo, Wye River, Camp David, Sharm Al Sheikh and of the other meets that are too many too mention. Madrid was positive for all sorts of reasons, there was a “Madrid spirit’ when things were supposed to happen but it quickly foundered as Israelis extremism and right-wing malaise set in.

Other than for the student of international politics, or the negotiator, especially the Israeli diplomat, today these events stand as political and diplomatic failures to a peace era which some like late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat saw as a breakthrough, but others felt were a Palestinian embroilment in a local political arena that is filled with ideological recriminations.

The meetings have not led anywhere but to a perpetuation of heartache not for the jet-setting politicians but the people who live under occupation and at the mercy of young Israeli soldiers ruling by the barrel of the gun, sauntering with their rifles at checkpoints and imposing willy-nilly curfews.

Madrid and Oslo were initial hopes for the Palestinian people, but they slowly turned into nightmares and sieges with fighters turned politiciansl.

Yes, Palestinian politicians were on their bits and pieces of “liberated” land, but they could not decide their future, didn’t control their foreign policy and their security was outside the realm of their control. This was peace in the 1990s and it was peace after the year 2000 when the Intifada erupted as the now coma-laden Ariel Sharon marched on the Al Aqsa mosque with his 2000-strong army of soldiers and their machine guns. In its wake, and seven years later, 4,267 Palestinians were killed, and 861 of them were children, and 467 Israelis, according to B'Tselem, the human rights group.

This is the context in which the Annapolis conference will take place. It’s photo opportunities for everyone, Palestinian leaders, Israelis, the Americans and probably the Europeans.

The conference may also been seen as a warning to the Hamas Islamic movement to behave themselves and not to stir trouble. They fairly and squarely won the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections and formed the government but were later dismissed by President Mahmood Abbas with excuses of the Islamists not being able to govern.

In reality however their win was such a shock to Fatah, Israelis, Americans and Europeans that all international aid was cut off, and Hamas spent the next 12 months struggling in the midst of Palestinian poverty that was already rife because daily per capita income was no more than $2, according to the World Bank.

For the Palestinian politicians Annapolis could be a thin veil to attempt to change things to their advantage in spite of the other agendas which the Americans and Israelis have. Experts have long said that the Palestinians need to be in the constant gambit of international diplomacy because of the nature of their struggle.

They always need to be seen as extending the olive branch despite the concessions and retractions this may involve, as this is a political game of zero-sum gains, recognition, support and influence.

At Annapolis, no substance is expected. The real hardcore issues of the return of refugees, borders, Jerusalem, statehood and many others are likely to be left limbo, but, in turn, the momentum of the ‘merry-go-round’ of peace might just be reactivated, which might be a good thing for arm-chair politicians who like to view the political scene and watch from a distance.