David Blair- 21/11/2007

David Blair, (Daily Telegraph)

"One of the strangest exercises in the history of diplomacy is about to begin. Next week, Israelis and Palestinians will fly to America for a peace conference, the aim of which is not to bring peace, let alone settle their conflict. The gathering in Annapolis will not even address the core issues dividing the two peoples in anything but the most vague and general terms.

Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, has spent weeks shuttling around the Middle East preparing for the meeting, yet its goal could scarcely be more modest. A joint declaration signed by the Israeli government under Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), will be the sole result. This will recite the issues dividing the two parties and look forward to "final status" talks, probably opening next month. Then the hard pounding will begin.

Israeli and Palestinian officials will try to resolve the issues at the heart of their conflict: the future of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, the borders of any Palestinian state, the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and, most intractable, the division of Jerusalem into two national capitals. If the two sides miraculously succeed in agreeing all of the above, a peace deal will follow. Miss Rice earnestly hopes this will occur before the Bush Administration goes out of business in January 2009. Then what? Israeli officials I met in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv last week believe that, instead of being implemented, any such deal would be placed carefully "on the shelf".

Even the most guarded sense of optimism collides with one stark reality - neither Mr Olmert nor Mr Abbas has the stature to enact any agreement and sell the inevitable concessions to their respective publics. Mr Olmert's mere survival in office is a minor triumph. His approval ratings fell to 19 per cent after last year's war in Lebanon. They have recently recovered to about 30 per cent - a stellar achievement by his modest standards, but not enough to deliver an epoch-making peace deal. Mr Olmert is a political colossus compared with his Palestinian counterpart. Mr Abbas has lost control of Gaza to Hamas, his Islamist enemies. In truth, he does not wield much power over the West Bank, either, and the supposed government he leads is a shambles.

Israel will consider leaving the West Bank only if the PA can be trusted to prevent terrorist attacks. Under present conditions, one senior Israeli said that after any withdrawal "we will be back there in 20 minutes, because they cannot stop even one terrorist."

So is that it? Must we forget about peace in the Middle East because of the political weakness of two failed leaders? First, a word about how we reached this juncture. Senior Israelis talk of Gaza's chaos and the PA's corruption in disturbing terms. "The proposition that the Palestinians are a governable nation has never been proved," said one. "The Palestinians are in danger of becoming a failed state and a failed nation," said another.

Regardless of the truth of these observations, Israel must accept its share of responsibility for the state of the Palestinian leadership. Four decades of occupation - involving blockades, air strikes, checkpoints, military raids and all the other horrors of conflict - have taken a terrible toll on Palestinian society. If a damaged society has produced dismal leaders, those who inflicted the damage cannot escape blame."

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