Maybe they will do so anyway. They certainly have good intentions--but I worry about their capabilities. At Annapolis, the joint understanding you read avoided anything controversial since neither side wanted to be seen as conceding anything. The purpose of Annapolis was to launch negotiations, and right now those negotiations don’t even have an agreed set of principles guiding them. So the question becomes: How can you persuade the leaders to overcome the fears that have constrained them from making the concessions you’ve asked for up to this point--concessions, I might add, which if a permanent status agreement is to be reached this year, would be the hardest any Israeli or Palestinian leader has ever had to make?
My answer would be that the public context must change. Both the Israeli and Palestinian publics have to be willing to take a second look at peacemaking. Today, their doubts overwhelm their hopes. A majority of Israelis and Palestinians say they believe in a two-state solution, and in almost equal numbers, they say they don’t believe it will ever be achieved--not, by the way, because of their own unwillingness, but because of what they perceive as the inability or ill will of their neighbor.
Israelis say, “We left Lebanon, and look what happened. We left Gaza and Hamas took over. Not for a single day has rocket fire ceased. Why wouldn’t the same thing happen in the West Bank, leaving our entire population vulnerable?” Palestinians say, “Israelis build settlements in what should be our state and restrict our movement. If we can’t go from Nablus to Jenin, why should we think we will get any of Jerusalem as our capital?”