WASHINGTON — On the eve of President Bush’s most ambitious effort to forge peace between Israelis and Palestinians, White House aides played down expectations for an immediate breakthrough, while Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally, made clear that it expects an aggressive administration attempt to broker a final deal.
Officials from about 50 countries and organizations arrived in Washington on Monday for today’s Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md., an event that U.S. officials describe as the beginning of negotiations they hope will lead to a Palestinian state, perhaps before Bush leaves office in January 2009.
U.S. officials touted the broad participation of Arab nations — 12 in all, including Syria, as well as the Arab League — as evidence of a new yearning in the region for an end to the conflict.
But Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were already having trouble agreeing on a document that would outline the parameters of negotiations — one sign of the huge obstacles awaiting the two sides when they sit down to bargain over such thorny issues as the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees.
U.S. reluctant on ideas
So far, the Bush administration has been reluctant to offer its ideas for bridging the various disagreements or to impose its version of a settlement, and U.S. officials indicated this week that that is unlikely to change.
“The notion that somehow the key to success is simply for the United States to lean on one side or another and jam a settlement through is just not what history has suggested,” national-security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters Sunday. “Those efforts to jam have not worked.”
But Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said Bush has assured that he will not let the new peace effort collapse and that he is willing to devise compromises when the Israelis and Palestinians become deadlocked.
“Our coming here means that not only Saudi Arabia but all the other Arab countries were convinced of this commitment, and the seriousness of intent behind this that will hopefully see the breakthrough that everyone is hoping for in the Middle East,” he told reporters Monday.
Bush proclaimed himself “optimistic” about the prospects for an agreement before heading into private meetings Monday, first with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, then with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Pleased by support
Olmert said he was pleased by the backing from other countries.
“The international support is very important for us,” he said as he thanked the president for helping the parties reach “this point where from we and the Palestinians will sit together, in Jerusalem, and work out something that will be very good to create a great hope for our peoples.”
Abbas later hailed Bush’s “historic initiative” in convening the Annapolis conference.
“We have a great deal of hope that this conference will produce permanent status negotiations that would lead to a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian people,” he said, speaking in Arabic through an interpreter.
Today’s conference represents something of a departure for Bush, who has generally shunned the close involvement in Middle East peace talks displayed by some former presidents.
But Bush and his aides believe the time may be ripe for a new initiative; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has visited the Middle East eight times this year, most recently seeking to coax skeptical Arab countries to attend the conference and to nudge the Israelis and Palestinians into agreeing on a document outlining the issues before them.
In recent days, however, U.S. officials have sought to temper expectations, saying it is no longer so important to craft a document because both sides have already agreed to hold final negotiations in Annapolis.
White House press secretary Dana Perino told reporters Monday the document “would be a nice thing to have, but it’s not critical to this meeting. They can launch the negotiations without a document.”
Aides said Bush’s opening speech will make it clear that he considers a peace deal a top priority of his final year in office. But they said he will not be dictating terms or imposing his own ideas for a settlement.
But Saudi Arabia’s Saud said efforts by the administration to ratchet down hopes did not reflect the views of many participants.
“The expectations are high regardless of what is said, and I hope that everybody who comes to the conference will be aware of the high expectation and will act accordingly,” he said.
Some Middle East experts, moreover, said Olmert and Abbas may need more than Bush administration rhetoric to reach a final settlement.
Track record meager
The track record of accomplishment in past meetings between the two is meager, they said, even though the relationship has warmed and they are said to have begun discussing some of the most vexing issues in settling the conflict.
Olmert is a deeply unpopular prime minister and Abbas has had control — barely — of only half of the Palestinian territories since the militant group Hamas seized Gaza in June. Yet they will be called upon to make difficult compromises — and then sell those compromises to their skeptical publics.
Abbas “is trying to negotiate the future of the Palestinian people while he is literally at war with at least half of the Palestinian people,” said Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy.
The so-called core issues between the two sides are the boundaries of a future Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem and the right claimed by Palestinian refugees to return to the Jewish state. But Palestinian and Israeli officials said Olmert and Abbas have not come close to resolving any of them.
Diana Butto, a former top Abbas aide, said that talks fill a need for Abbas but are unlikely to ever yield much.
“He wants a peace process, but he does not care about the details or the substance so much,” she said. “I don’t think he has a strategy for liberating the country.”
Olmert has long said he would allow some outlying Arab-majority neighborhoods of Jerusalem to be part of a Palestinian state, largely to strengthen the Jewish majority in Israel. But no specific proposals on Jerusalem, such as those that the sides tentatively agreed to in the last formal Israeli-Palestinian talks, emerged from their meetings.
Olmert has never wavered from rejecting the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel. He has said the future Palestinian state is the natural home for the refugees, and his negotiating team demanded in pre-conference talks that the Palestinians recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
Dinner a test of protocol
WASHINGTON — Throwing a fancy dinner party is never easy. But it takes the stress up a notch when some of the guests won’t even shake hands.
Monday night’s dinner at the State Department for participants in the Mideast summit was a championship test of protocol.
What to serve guests without offending either Muslim or kosher sensitivities? Who should be seated next to whom when some guests shudder at the notion of being photographed together?
This part was easy: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the host of the affair, sat front and center. On either side of her were Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
In his toast, President Bush talked of the common goal — two states, Israel and Palestine, living in harmony — and reminded the representatives from more than 40 Mideast delegations that he was personally committed to the cause. He then stepped forward to clink glasses with Abbas and Olmert; his had water in it. Theirs had iced tea.
Then Bush worked the room for several minutes. He did not stay for dinner.
The meal, keyed to both kosher and Muslim dietary restrictions, included main entrees of either red and yellow beet salad with curried mango dressing or honey-soy glazed sea bass with cabbage, snow peas and mushrooms.
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Hard-liners assail possible concessions
JERUSALEM — The leaders of Hamas on Monday espoused a hard line against Israel at a conference that they and the militant Islamic Jihad faction convened in Gaza on the eve of the American-sponsored Middle East peace gathering in Annapolis, Md.
Also on Monday, Israeli right-wing activists stepped up their campaign against possible concessions to the Palestinians with demonstrations in Jerusalem.
In Gaza, Ismail Haniya, Hamas’ leader, said, “Let the whole world hear us: We will not relinquish a centimeter of Palestine, and we will not recognize Israel.”
Haniya, who is usually associated with the more pragmatic wing of the Islamic movement, was responding to a refugee from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war who came up to the podium showing the deed for land he had left behind in what is now Israel.
Mahmoud Zahar, an influential Hamas leader in Gaza, told a packed hall in Gaza City, “Not a single person, not a government, not a single generation has the right to relinquish any area of Palestine.”
Any normalization of relations “with the enemy is a treason,” he said.
The statements were aimed at deterring the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, from making concessions to the Israelis, as reports filtered back from Washington that the Israeli and Palestinian teams were closer to reaching a joint declaration on the form of peace negotiations.
The harsh tone reflected the increasing isolation of Hamas in Gaza. Arab states, including Syria, a patron of Hamas, have chosen to take part in the Annapolis meeting.
“We call on all people in the Arab and Islamic nations and all the intellectuals to stand with us,” Zahar said.
Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip by force in June, routing the rival pro-Abbas forces there in a brief factional war.
On Monday, right-wing Israelis handed out gold ribbons, the color associated with Jerusalem, at main junctions to express opposition to any talk of dividing Jerusalem, and at least 15,000 people attended a prayer session at the Western Wall in the Old City, according to police estimates.
The Palestinians demand control over east Jerusalem, including the Old City, as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
In the evening, several thousand right-wing protesters gathered near the prime minister’s residence.
Their rally drew an overwhelmingly young crowd, largely teen agers. Speakers warned the Israeli government against harming settlements in the West Bank or compromising over Jerusalem.
