Countdown to Annapolis - 3
November 13th, 2007After being miles apart for months, the Israeli and Palestinian positions suddenly seemed to converge last week: the goal of Annapolis will not be to nail down prior commitments about final-status (borders, Jerusalem, etc) but to get negotiations moving again and to relaunch the “road map” with its on-the-ground commitments from both sides (fighting terrorism, stopping settlement-building). It will be what Shai Feldman and Khalil Shikaki recently described (pdf) as the “Launching Pad” option.
What triggered this change is still a bit of a mystery to me, but the magic moment seems to have been Olmert’s speech to the Saban Forum last week, when he said he wanted to finish up final-status talks by the time Bush leaves office a year from now. The Palestinians, who had been pounding on about how they would not go to Annapolis without commitments to the substantive issues and to a deadline for completing final-status talks, suddenly caved in completely. “The American, Israeli and Palestinian sides are all insistent that we reach an end before the end of Bush’s term in office, and that is what we wish,” Abbas said.
Why? Was Olmert’s vague aspiration — not a commitment — to a one-year deadline really enough for Abbas? Surely not. More likely, Abbas simply feared being painted by Israel and the US as a rejectionist if he held out any longer.
Either way, it was a move of genius on Olmert’s part, for two reasons. He neutralised the Palestinian objections at an extremely low price: a one-year deadline that nobody will hold him to if things go wrong. And he neutralised his domestic challengers too. For the next twelve months, anyone who tries to destabilise his coalition will be accused of derailing the peace process.
This especially applies to Ehud Barak. As defence minister, Barak is responsible for implementing Israel’s end of the road map: he decides which checkpoints get removed in the West Bank and what action is taken against unauthorised settlement-building. In the last few weeks he’s been positioning himself for an election by taking a tough line on all these things, trying to make himself look more security-minded than Olmert. By making the peace process all about the road map, Olmert has managed to make it look to everyone — and most importantly to the Americans, as Aluf Benn described last weekend — like Barak is the one throwing a spanner in the works.
Meanwhile, having agreed to put the road map back at the centre of the peace process, the Palestinians seem to have remembered suddenly what a bum deal it was for them in the past. The road map’s first stage requires the PA to begin “sustained, targeted, and effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure”, while Israel “immediately dismantles settlement outposts erected since March 2001″ and “freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)”. But though the road map quite clearly describes these as simultaneous, Israel has usually insisted that the Palestinians carry out their end of the bargain first. That’s why the road map never got anywhere. The Palestinians are now warning that this could precipitate a crisis in the talks (but, curiously, coming to Olmert’s rescue by saying it is Barak and Livni who are the stumbling blocks, though Olmert himself seems to be sending similar signals: “If stage one of the road map is implemented - if the Palestinians dismantle terror infrastructure - then and only then will Israel have to implement” a final-status agreement).
But I don’t see that the Palestinians have any leverage here. They said there’d be no Annapolis without Israeli commitments to final-status issues; they caved. If they say there’ll be no Annapolis without a proper Israeli commitment to the road map, who’s going to take them seriously?