Annapolis

Those at the Annapolis conference can be divided to three broad categories: the hopeful (i.e., the Americans and the Canadians), the cynics (i.e., the Israelis and the Palestinians), and the bored. Now everyone is arguing over who the “winner” of this conference is.

Avi Yissasharof of Haaretz claims that Abu Mazen is the “big winner”: he got almost everything he wanted, and rendered Hamas and the terrorist organizations irrelevant. Moreover, Abu Mazen can now brag to the Palestinians about an unprecedented achievement: he is coming back home with a joint American-Israeli promise to establish a Palestinian state by 2008.

Meanwhile, Yohay Sela of Omedia, an Israeli site which says it provides in-depth news analysis of current affairs, claims that “so far, the biggest winner of the conference is Syria.” According to Sela, Syria changed its position from a country suspected of providing massive assistance to terrorist organizations in Iraq and Lebanon, to a country that is now considered an “equal partner” in the peace process- without it, the conference couldn’t have been successful according to the American scenario.

Not surprisingly, Nour Odeh of Al Jazeera thinks Israel had the upper hand at Annapolis: “The statement of President Bush gave the Israelis something the Palestinians were hoping not to hear from him.

All these statements are at least partially false. Abu-Mazen is no winner. There was no meaningful discussion of the core issues, and when he gets back home he will have to deal with the Palestinians’ disappointment on the one hand and Hamas’ wrath on the other. Syria is surely not the winner, as its last-minute decision to attend the conference after magisterial threats it would not, is seen as an abashment. Israel is not the winner, for when Olmert goes back home he will have to deal with the right wing parties in his government. Ihud HaLeumi (National Unity Party) Chariman Arye Eldad says his party “must leave the government.” The only reason Shas’ Chairman Eli Yishay is not threatening to resign from the government yet is because he thinks “there is no way the vision of the two leaders will ever come true.”

Evidently, this language of “winners” and “losers” is meaningless. Annapolis is not, unfortunately, a magic button for peace in the Middle East. Neither a sweeping success nor a disaster are likely scenarios

An Israeli official who spoke on a condition of anonymity, said: “The US knows how to give the best show in town, so everybody wants to go. But at the end of the day, you go back home to the same old problems. We know these problems. Abu-Mazen and Olmert do not know how to deliver; they only know how to receive. And in order to do something meaningful, one has to know how to deliver.”

Everyone wants to go home. With one of the Israeli press delegations to my right and the Palestinian delegation to my left, I asked: “How come you want to go home so badly?” They both replied, “Home is a pile of problems. But at least something is happening there. Here, here it’s boring.”