True
Aim Of Annapolis,
And Why It Failed
By
Ramzy Baroud
10 December,
2007
Countercurrents.org
The US-sponsored peace conference
in Annapolis, Maryland was neither a success nor failure, if one accepts
that its so-called objective was indeed ‘peacemaking’.
From a US
perspective, the meeting was, at best, a diplomatic manoeuvre on the
part of the Bush administration, a last chance for becoming relevant
to a region that is quickly escaping its grip. At worst, the conference
was a desperate public relations charade aimed at convincing the American
public that the administration’s plans for democracy and peace
in the Middle East are unfolding smoothly. In both scenarios, the conference
was a necessary but fleeting distraction from the prevailing criticism
that the Iraq war is a ‘nightmare’ without end.
Bush’s
words at Annapolis suggested he was playing exactly the part Israel
expected of him. His emphasis on the Jewish identity of Israel, itself
a crude violation of the principles of secularism, seems more than a
mere gesture to appease the concerns of Israel and its backers in the
US; it was actually a subtle acceptance of the ethnic cleansing that
continues to define Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. After
all, millions of Palestinians have for decades been expelled from their
land for no other reason than not being Jewish, while millions of Jews
around the world are welcomed ‘back’ to Israel – a
land that they never lived in or had prior ties to. Could Bush not have
known about this when he emphasised the need for a Jewish state? I doubt
it.
So what kind
of peace process are we talking about? By any reasonable definition,
peacemaking usually occurs to bridge the gap and resolve disagreements
between antagonists; friends don’t need to ‘negotiate’
through the use of ‘initiatives’ and ‘painful compromises’
to find a ‘common ground’. While both Israelis and Palestinians
are in urgent need for peace to replace the hostility caused by Israel’s
illegal military occupation, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could hardly qualify as
‘enemies’ caught in a state of ‘hostilities’
from which they require escape. Indeed, both men are individually beleaguered
in many ways and engaged in a war of their own – but not against
one another. If anything, both Abbas and Olmert are in a state of political
symbiosis, a mutual dependency that borders, strangely enough, on solidarity.
Annapolis
was the perfect platform for both leaders to alleviate their individual
woes.
Abbas needed the international validation after his non-constitutional
response to the clash with Hamas in Gaza. Being unpopular among Palestinians,
the survival of his regime is solely dependent on his ability to sustain
the patronage system of his authority in the West Bank. Without international
funds, US validation, and Israeli permission, Abbas cannot run his nepotistic
empire, itself under Israeli military occupation. Therefore he needs
to keep up the balancing act, and cannot be expected to infuriate Israel
by pushing for serious demands at the negotiating table, scheduled to
begin December 12.
Olmert, overseeing
a shaky coalition, is gripped by two daunting realities: one, he has
no mandate to make any ‘compromises’, painful or otherwise,
and two, the fact that a two-state solution is close to becoming obsolete.
In a rare frankness, he expressed these fears in an interview with the
daily Haaretz right after returning from Annapolis. “The day will
come when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style
struggle for equal voting rights...As soon as that happens, the state
of Israel (as an exclusively Jewish state) is finished.”
In retrospect,
this helps to explain Bush’s insistence on the Jewish identity
of Israel.
What’s
ironic is that the same parties that once considered the recognition
of the word ‘Palestine’ as blasphemous and anti-Semitic
are now advocating a Palestinian state. David A. Harris, Executive Director
of the American Jewish Committee told the Los Angeles Times, November
30, that even the two-state solution has to be qualified. “No.
no. Two-space-nation-space-states. Not just two states, two nation states.
A Jewish state called Israel, and a Palestinian Arab state called Palestine.
This is the language that Prime Minister Olmert has been using, that
Foreign Minister Livni has been using, that President Bush has embraced,
and (was also used by) President Sarkozy (of France).”
Olmert, like
many Israeli and Jewish Zionist leaders (as opposed to non-Zionist Jews
who refuse to subscribe to this archaic mindset) increasingly realizes
that Israel’s colonial euphoria is backfiring; the failure to
define Israel’s borders – left open with the hope of further
territorial expansion – is making it impossible for Israel to
achieve total dominance of Jews over Arabs, while still calling itself
a democracy. There is hardly a doubt that the bad choices made by Israel
in the past are now irrevocable, and that indeed the future struggle
will be that of equality within one state.
Rather than
being a right, or wrong, step toward peace between two conflicting parties,
Annapolis has provided a stage for much sweet talk, hyped expectations
and soundbytes for leaders with pressing motivations. Reporters may
have been told that Annapolis offered “hope...cautious hope, but
hope” by Olmert’s spokesperson, but neither hope, nor breaking
the seven year of ‘deadlock’ - as prophesized by Palestinian
negotiator Saeb Erekat – are relevant here. The meeting and the
year of ‘negotiations’ expected to follow it are part of
Israel’s last attempt at ‘preserving’ its Jewish identity,
and creating a South Africa-style Palestinian Bantustans. Palestinians
will be granted the freedom to call such disconnected islands whatever
they wish, and to hoist their flag within the caged entities, if they
must, but nothing more.
Although
both Bush and Abbas are willing collaborators in this undemocratic endeavour,
Israelis must wake up to the fact that their country is knee-deep in
Apartheid, and nothing is significant enough to salvage their racially-selective
democracy, except true democracy. It’s time for people like Harris
to stop talking of ‘two-space-nation-space-states’ and other
such nonsense, but instead to invest sincere efforts in finding a formula
that guarantees peace, justice and security for both Palestinians and
Israelis, without overlooking the historic responsibility of Israel
over the plight and dispossession of the Palestinians.
Ramzy
Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net)
is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com.
His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide.
His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a
People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).
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