The planned conference on the Middle East in Annapolis will reap its first success by the very fact that it will bring together, after several years, Israeli and Palestinian leaders, with possible representatives from some Arab countries.
This sounds trivial but is not. Since the debacle of the 2000 Camp David conference, there has been a complete breakdown in meaningful negotiations between both sides, after Arafat refused the comprehensive compromise offered to him by Israeli Prime Minister Barak and US President Clinton. The Palestinians reverted to massive terrorism against Israeli civilians, and it was obvious that the Oslo agreements broke down. Annapolis will be the first international forum in which the two sides will come back to the negotiating table.
Since then a lot of things have happened, and some of them explain why negotiations now seem possible. Arafat died, and the Palestinians now have in Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) a moderate leader: even the fact that he wears a suit rather than the quasi-military uniform Arafat never gave up is a significant symbol of change. Israel, under Sharon, carried out the Gaza disengagement, and in dismantling Jewish settlements there and evacuating 9,000 settlers proved that a courageous, de Gaulle-like policy can reverse decades of right-wing policies aiming at settling more and more Israelis in the occupied territories.
On the other hand, the armed putsch of the Islamic Hamas movement in Gaza last June has shown that some of the problems are internal Palestinian issues: if two Palestinian militias – Fatah and Hamas – cannot agree on power sharing and shoot and kill each other's members, how reasonable are the chances of an Israeli-Palestinian rapprochement?
It is this complex picture which should cause caution when looking to what Annapolis can achieve. It appears that even a general declaration of principles may be difficult to agree on, since even on a declaratory level it would be almost impossible for either side to accept the formulations demanded by the other. That is so even if both sides know that this is what will have to happen if an agreement would ever be achieved.
Examples: the Palestinians will insist that any declaration of principles would view the 1967 cease-fire lines ("The Green Line") as the boundary between Israel and the future Palestinian state, and all Jewish settlements dismantled. It is highly improbable that the Olmert government can now declare that more than 200,000 Israeli settlers would be evacuated. Similarly, the Palestinians will demand that Jerusalem would be re-divided and serve as a capital of the two states: were Olmert to accept this demand now, his government would fall and in all probability new elections would bring the Likud's right-wing Netanyahu to power.
On the other hand, Israel's insistence that the Palestinians give up their claim that the 1948 refugees and their descendants will return to Israel, will not be accepted by them. Everyone knows that such a step on the Palestinian side is as necessary for peace in the Middle East as the realization on the part of Germany that the post-1945 Vertriebene cannot return to Poland, Czechoslovakia or Hungary. But the Palestinian leadership will have great problems in declaring this now, as for 60 years they have educated their children on the dream of the Ouda ("Return").
So what can be achieved, despite these difficulties? Very much: a clear Israeli commitment to dismantle illegal outposts in the West Bank, stop building new settlements and diminish the number of roadblocks which – while crucial for the fight against terrorism – humiliate many Palestinians in their daily life. The Palestinians will have to carry out their previous obligations of fighting terrorism, and the first step would be consolidating their numerous security services – really nothing else than armed militias and gangs – into a coherent security authority, carrying out the Weberian monopoly of the legitimate exercise of power.
Furthermore, at Annapolis both sides can decide on setting up bilateral working groups on specific issues – political, security-related, economic – that should report to a further plenary conference in a few months' time. This will create a mechanism of practical negotiations, with the more complex issues dealt with at a later stage.
On a theoretical level this means realizing that at this stage, the time is not yet ripe for conflict resolution and what is needed are careful, pragmatic steps of conflict management. Just as in Cyprus, Kosovo and Bosnia, where conflict resolution is still far away but mechanisms for conflict containment have been developed successfully so as to avoid a fresh outbreak of hostilities and violence, so the same can be achieved in the Middle East. Between a Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes (the war of all against all) and a Kantian peace there are always numerous third ways.
Shlomo Avineri is Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and served as Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the first government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.