US Secretary of State makes farewell tour of the Middle East

Just a year after the United States sponsored a Middle East Peace Conference at Annapolis, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is off to the region next week to meet with various parties in order to encourage them to press ahead.

Last year, America urged the parties to conclude a peace deal by the end of President Bush’s term of office but that doesn’t look likely now. Arabs and Israelis both agree on at least one thing and it is that the American timelines will not be met.

Rice will start her tour the day after America elects a new President. The election will undoubtedly impact on the parties’ views of what will be possible in the weeks and months ahead.

But the American election is not the only one at issue. Ms. Livni’s failure to put together a coalition means Israel will go to fresh elections in February. And Palestinians are also divided over who is in charge and some are calling for fresh elections. The Israeli elections alone should delay any peace negotiations until well into the spring of 2009.

Secretary Rice will visit Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories during her four-day tour. After soliciting views from Fatah Palestinians, various Israelis and Jordan’s King, Rice will huddle with representatives of the Middle East Quartet at Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh resort on the 9th of November. The Quartet, composed of the EU, US, UN and Russia, are unlikely to be able to offer much encouragement.

Meanwhile, Hamas and Fatah are scheduled to start reconciliation discussions in Cairo on the same day Rice meets on the Red Sea with the Quartet. These intra-Palestinian talks are very important. Hamas currently controls Gaza while Fatah has broader sway on the West Bank. Before Palestinians can hope to succeed in talks with the Israelis, they must have a clear idea of who is in charge and what they want.

The same applies to the Israelis. Political leadership in Israel is passing to a younger generation but lately they seem equally incapable of deciding who is in charge of their political future.

There will be no progress towards Peace until the two sides have determined who will speak for them and what they will say. America must do the same before it can help.

Day two of the Annapolis Talks

It appears that two days of talks in Annapolis have resulted in an agreement to agree. The Parties to the Arab-Israeli conflict have agreed to direct, near full-time negotiations on all issues until a final agreement is reached in 2008. Some of the future negotiating sessions will be hosted by Russia. President Bush has appointed retired USMC General Jones as his special representative to the two negotiating parties. (That should be a relief to MG Dayton who has been stuck with the job for the past two years.)

Agreeing to agree does not seem like a big success at first glance. But remember the Conference only lasted a day and a half and involved 40 disparate parties. It was a major accomplishment just to get them all to the table (Not quite all; Djibouti was invited but failed to attend.) Just getting people to agree who are the interested parties was a major event. Getting them to then actually participate was another. It was also an accomplishment to decide to negotiate about the issues - not to negotiate about what would be negotiated. It was a success to agree to negotiate all issues, including core issues such as Jerusalem and the Right of Return. In the past, those thorny issues have always be postponed for future talks. They have now agreed to talk directly about the tough things for the first time. To talk about all the issues all the time prevents one party or the other from using arguments of sequential nature to slow progress across the board.

Hopefully, General Jones will play a useful role in determining negotiation procedures and venues. Getting the parties back into talks again will be a challenge but it should be undertaken quickly to prevent forces opposed to conflict resolution from marshalling their forces and resources against peace. Setting up lines of communications between parties who are not used to talking is another valuable role America can play.

Annapolis appears to have been an agreeable success but it is only the first stop a new track towards peace. Many things can derail it. Let us hope that this effort makes farther down the tracks than past efforts and that it finally brings great peace, prosperity and understanding to the troubled MidEast.