The tone of the much-vaunted upcoming Arab-Israeli peace meeting is turning perceptively positive, inexplicably, writes Dina Ezzat This afternoon, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordanian King Abdullah are expected in Sharm El-Sheikh for talks with President Hosni Mubarak. The three-way Arab summit might expand to include some other Arab leaders. It will be followed, this evening and tomorrow morning, by a ministerial meeting of the 13-member Arab Peace Initiative Committee in which Abbas and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa will participate. These meetings come 48 hours after the US has already issued invitations for its proposed peace meeting to be held in Annapolis, next Tuesday. They also come at the tail end of an Egyptian- Israeli summit that convened in Sharm El-Sheikh Tuesday morning and where both President Mubarak and his guest Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared that the Annapolis meeting would pave the way to the eventual launch of final status talks between the Palestinians and Israel. "Our consultations come [only] one week before the international conference on Middle East peace and as part of continuous Egyptian contacts with the Israeli and Palestinian sides, as well as with concerned regional and international parties, to secure the success of the [Annapolis] meeting and to make sure that it produces the [kind of] results that would break the stalemate in the peace process on the Palestinian-Israeli track and open the way to similar progress on other tracks," Mubarak said following his 90-minute strictly private talks with Olmert. In a sceptical tenor that seemed to overshadow a deliberately positive lexicon, Mubarak expressed "sincere hopes" -- but spoke of no expectations -- of success in Annapolis. And in an obvious attempt to avoid casting a "spoiling" shadow over the American organised diplomatic feast, Mubarak declined to speak of the "failure of Annapolis". For him, this would be akin to talk of a total freeze of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations -- a scenario that the Egyptian head of state warned many a time would lead to very grave consequences. "We might face problems on the road and we might have to find ways to overcome these problems," Mubarak said Tuesday. He expressed hope that Olmert would take "the constructive positions" necessary to make Annapolis a success. For his part, Moussa, who insists that the convocation of an international peace meeting is essentially Arab, said Monday that he is "hopeful rather than optimistic". Diplomatic diction aside, the question remains: what would be considered a successful meeting by the criteria of Arab officials who have for months insisted that they would not go to Annapolis for yet another pointless photo opportunity? From the Israeli point of view, according to statements made by Olmert during a joint press conference with Mubarak Tuesday, "the mere convocation of the Annapolis meeting is a success." By Israel's own logic, this is a perfectly reasonable stance. In Annapolis, Israeli officials would doubtless savour pausing for the world press together with an enlarged cast of Arab counterparts. In other words, simply by showing up, Israel takes home an unprecedented signal of normalisation from Arab states, including from heavyweights such as Saudi Arabia. On the Arab side, there seems to be no such clarity of possible gains. Beyond the all but reluctant and not particularly detailed promise made Monday by Olmert regarding a freeze of settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel does not seem to be willing to commit much. It is, rather, making provocative demands of Palestinians and Arabs going to Annapolis to recognise the "Jewish" nature of Israel, irrespective of the consequences of such recognition on the fate of 1948 Arabs who refused or avoided expulsion, or for that matter the legitimate right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees. Olmert said in Sharm El-Sheikh this week that his government admires (which does not mean recognise) the Arab Peace Initiative -- the alibi for the participation of Arab League secretary-general and some other Arab foreign ministers whose countries have no relations with Israel in the peace meeting, and perhaps even for handshakes with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. According to diplomatic sources acquainted with Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, conducted for the past few weeks to prepare for Annapolis, Israel is not yet prepared to set a fixed timeline or deadline for final status talks with the Palestinians. Nor is it particularly firm on plans proposed by Russia and France to pursue an "Annapolis II" meeting to examine prospects for the resumption of talks on the Syrian and Lebanese tracks. In Sharm El-Sheikh, Olmert came armed with overt and covert threats against Hamas militants and the entirety of Gaza. He was full of demands regarding more active Egyptian involvement in efforts aimed to lead to the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Palestinians in June 2006, and regarding firmer Egyptian control of the Gaza-Egypt border to prevent potential arms smuggling to Hamas. He urged a high-level wide Arab participation in Annapolis. However, when it came to Palestinian rights, including basic human rights, Olmert argued that the problems of 60 years of struggle could not be resolved in the short term. Speaking on background, some Arab diplomatic sources suggested a positive opening up, especially on the US side. "We will get some freeze on the settlements, tentative timelines for future Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, some sort of a follow-up committee to secure the implementation of whatever is agreed upon by the Palestinian and Israeli negotiating teams, and a reference to the need to address the Syrian and Lebanese tracks," commented one senior Arab official. "It is not exactly what we had demanded for our participation in Annapolis," he admitted. In the assessment of this official, Arabs are promised 50 to 60 per cent of the demands they laid out during the past few weeks. "This means we are not going on the cheap," he said. During press statements in Egypt, and elsewhere in the region, visiting UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband and International Quartet on the Middle East Envoy Tony Blair urged all concerned parties to realise that talks, even if tough and complicated, are better for the region than the freeze of negotiations that has caused despair during the past seven years. "If there is an opportunity we don't wish to turn our back on it," Moussa said Monday. He added: "we are going to Annapolis to [engage in] peace [talks]." During their joint press conference in Sharm El-Sheikh Tuesday, Mubarak and Olmert paid tribute to the "historic" visit of late president Anwar El-Sadat to Jerusalem three decades ago and his speech before the Knesset that appealed for Arab- Israeli peace. Both the Egyptian president and the Israeli prime minister expressed hope that Sadat's call for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace would materialise with the signing of a final status agreement between the Palestinians and Israelis in the next 12 months. In mid-May next year, Israel will celebrate 60 years as a state. At the same time the Palestinians -- and also Arabs -- will remember the Nakba (dispossession) that Israel's creation entailed. It is not clear if by that date the two sides will be close to marking a historic settlement of the struggle. What is clear is that unless the Annapolis meeting is more than a brainstorming and good intentions declaration opportunity, peace will remain elusive as this momentous anniversary approaches.
