• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Analysis: The Road to Annapolis

Council on Foreign Relations

November 23, 2007
Author: Michael Moran

If the Bush administration intended to lower expectations ahead of the Middle East peace conference it is hosting in Annapolis on November 27, the effort has been a resounding success. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spent weeks shuttling back and forth to the region, and at times sounded decidedly pessimistic about prospects for progress. Then, on November 20, the administration announced it had invited over forty nations to attend.

In spite of an upbeat assessment (video) from David Welch, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, the ground looks anything but fertile. Prodded by Rice, the primary diplomatic actors—Israel and the Palestinian Authority—spent weeks in a fruitless effort (Ynet) to agree to a joint declaration on a “two-state solution” that Washington hoped would form the foundation of the conference. In the latest twist, rhetorical outrage swept the Arab world when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insisted the Palestinian side accept the notion of Israel as a Jewish state, as opposed to a multicultural one, as a precondition to any grand bargain (BBC).

On a political level, things are hardly better. A presidential election year in the United States limits the Bush administration’s options as candidates on both sides vie to be seen as a friend of Israel. Among Palestinians, meanwhile, the week preceding the conference brought new violence in Gaza, the destitute Palestinian appendage seized from President Mahmoud Abbas’ government by the Hamas movement last summer. Abbas issued a statement this week which stopped just short of calling for an uprising against Hamas (al-Jazeera), a group whose suicide bombers played a large role in ruining the last serious peace initiative, the Oslo process of the 1990s.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.