JERUSALEM - The trilateral summit among U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman
Mahmoud Abbas was concluded here Monday without anything substantial.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
(L-R), U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israel's Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert meet in Jerusalem February 19, 2007, in this picture
released by the U.S. Embassy. Israeli-Palestinian talks hosted by Rice
ended on Monday with little sign of progress on reviving long-stalled
peace negotiations beyond a vague promise to meet again. [Reuters] |
Actually this result is not at all an unexpected surprise to all the parties
in the summit and the public as well.
Israel maintained contacts with Abbas as regarding him as a moderate while
boycotting the Hamas government. The trilateral summit, which was scheduled
during Rice's previous visit to the region, was meant to restart the diplomatic
process. But the unity government agreement reached between Fatah and Hamas in
Mecca last week posed a dilemma for Israel.
Due to the complications following the Mecca Agreement, Rice lowered her
expectations for the summit one day before it was held by saying: "What I would
consider a success tomorrow is that we have gotten started." Israel even
considered to cancel the proposed summit before it happened as it decided to
reassess its relations with Abbas due to the Mecca agreement.
Under these circumstances, the summit seems doomed without substantiality
though both Olmert and Abbas had some plans to talk something very substantial.
Olmert was planning to demand that Abbas obtain the release of captured
Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit from Palestinian militant groups, but
had no intention of offering Abbas any goodwill gestures aimed at easing daily
life for Palestinian civilians, such as those that followed the two men's
meeting on Dec. 23, 2006.
Palestinian sources expected that the summit would raise three issues:
implementation of the November 2005 crossings agreement, the transfer of
collected taxes from Israel to Abu Mazen (Abbas)'s cabinet and the future of the
peace process.
All the prepared topics were not mentioned in the statement Rice read to the
press soon after the summit while she said that Abbas and Olmert affirmed the
commitment to a two-state solution and agreed that a Palestinian state can not
be born of violence and terror and agreed to meet again.
"Nothing substantial came out of the meeting because nothing substantial
could come out of the meeting," said Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow in the
Shalem Center's Institute for Zionist History and Thought.
Describing the summit as "an empty show" of the three parties in an interview
with Xinhua, Halevi said: "all the parties have their own needs for the meeting:
Abbas is trying to get foreign aids and Quartet's approval of lifting the
sanctions. Olmert needs to show Israeli public that he is capable of diplomatic
initiatives. Rice, who represent a country which is stuck in Iraq, wants to show
some kind of movement and progress in Middle East peace process."
"Actually it is an empty show in the theater of negotiations," said Halevi,
"Nobody in Israel, probably in Palestine, has any hope in these leaders and the
negotiation."
According to local media, Olmert and Abbas also discussed a possible
extension to a three-month-old cease-fire in the Gaza Strip to include the West
Bank in the summit.
In an interview with Xinhua, Eran Laman, an Israeli expert in Middle East
politics, said that he still believed the summit would be helpful to limit the
Israeli-Palestinian conflicts though it had not made any
breakthrough