Condoleezza Rice is busy
preparing her picnic at Annapolis
that will start next Tuesday, November 26. Nobody is quite sure who will
come although almost everyone is quite sure that nothing much will
happen. Maybe a statement that will not really commit anyone to
anything. Following in the footsteps of the Clinton administration, the Bushies are
giving their desperate all for some semblance of an Israeli-Palestinian accord,
however vague. And the Olmert government has cooperated in announcing
that it will close down all the "illegal" outposts in the West Bank (these are two- or three-caravan bivouacs on
hills adjoining some long-established settlements) and not permit any further
expansion of villages and towns in the territory. But this presumes that the Palestinians will be able to meet
their part of the bargain, implicit or explicit: shut down the operations of
the terror organizations, including especially those that exist and breathe
under the aegis of Mahommad Abbas' Fatah, the so-called moderate camp.
I believe that Annapolis
is a wasted effort, and that's because the Palestinian Authority cannot
possibly produce what little to which it may have to commit. The fact
also is that, increasingly, sophisticated political people grasp that nothing
much rides on the conflict between the Jewish State and the imagining of a
Palestinian one. In fact, the trash that Muslim hostility to the U.S. is drawn largely from U.S. support for Israel is the dogma of fewer and
fewer Americans, of whom the paradigm is Zbigniew Bzrezinski. Remember
his last day in power was when Jimmy Carter was president. Oh my!
Actually, nothing will change deeply for the U.S.
in the region even if Israel
would hand over to the West Bank to the Palestinians, with half of Jerusalem, to boot.
Yes, I believe that the Gaza
calamity would, under these circumstances, be a prelude to the next one.
Tom Friedman made
the point about the secondary status of the stand-off between the Israelis and
the Palestinians in his Times column of November 18: "After Iraq and
Pakistan, the most vexing foreign policy issue that will face the next
president will be how to handle Iran." Is this a slight to Israel's
importance in the region? Not at all. One fact this reflects is
what the important Arab allies worry about and, believe me, it's not the
Palestinians.