Despite avowing "optimism" in the countdown to the opening of the International Peace Conference in Annapolis, Maryland on Tuesday, when almost everyone else was openly pessimistic, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was destined to be disappointed. The Palestinians and the Israelis failed to agree on a joint accord that would have set a time frame for "peace negotiations" yet still representatives from 50 countries crossed the Atlantic to participate in a meeting the vast majority believe will fail to achieve any progress towards peace. The Arab League's secretary-general announced the "death of the peace process" when Israel launched its bloody war on Lebanon last year, a ruthless assault that targeted and killed hundreds of innocent civilians and destroyed much of Lebanon's infrastructure. Shouldn't that have been a reminder of who exactly Abbas's peace partner is? So how is it that peace has been so suddenly resurrected? Is Annapolis simply an exercise in listening to harmless proposals and ideas to "revive" the "peace process"? And why are Arab officials so keen to project an Arab consensus -- a euphemism for collective defeat -- by participating in a conference they have regularly predicted can end only in failure? Or is all the noise simply a strategy to deflect from the startling decision of Saudi Arabia and Syria to openly sit and talk with Israel? Israel clearly feels it is high time that the model of "moderate" Arab countries like Egypt and Jordan -- which have full diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv -- should be embraced by other Arab states, and at absolutely no cost to itself. The Annapolis conference does, of course, carry a deeper and more disturbing significance. For judging by what was heard and seen in the American city the participants who represent 50 nations are making a statement, simply by their presence. And what they are saying is that the United Nations and its many resolutions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are now irrelevant to the entire peace process. This gives the US and Israel freedom to act outside the boundaries of international law. It also further partitions the region into moderate states and those that are not: it is the latter that, in Washington and Tel Aviv's scheme of things, remain the obstacle to US and Israeli plans for the region, while the former are being softened up to accept a possible military attack on Iran. For it is Iran -- a country pursuing its right, in accordance with International Atomic Energy Agency standards, to develop nuclear energy independently -- that is the invisible guest at a feast the purpose of which is to further isolate Tehran. The media hype surrounding the Annapolis meeting has been pegged on the Middle East peace process. Statements on "a future Palestinian state" were invariably followed by the qualification "free of terror" and the importance of guaranteeing "Israeli security". Israeli occupation, land grabbing, illegal settlements, demolition of Palestinian property and houses and daily killing of Palestinian civilians were not mentioned in Annapolis. No one expected them to be. Annapolis is a legacy that well suits US President George W Bush.
