Israelis Temper Summit Expectations

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The New York Sun

UNITED NATIONS — As Israeli officials downplayed hopes for a major breakthrough at the planned summit of Middle Eastern leaders next month in Annapolis, Md., Secretary of State Rice yesterday announced plans to travel to the region to begin what aides called the “real hard work” of preparing the peacemaking parley.

Differences in interpreting yesterday’s developments underlined what some in the region see as a major gap between Washington’s and Jerusalem’s expectations for the summit.

The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, met with Prime Minister Olmert at the Israeli leader’s official Jerusalem residence yesterday, and the two leaders agreed to delay dealing with so-called “final status” issues until after the November summit, according to an unidentified aide to the prime minister who briefed the Israeli press.

“After the November conference, they will start to negotiate a final agreement,” the aide was quoted by major Israeli news outlets as saying. This will be done bilaterally, rather than under the international pressure of the summit, and “with no timetable,” he added.

On the other hand, a State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, stressed “encouraging statements” coming out of the Abbas-Olmert meeting, including an agreement that teams of experts from both sides will start working on a “joint declaration” for the summit. “The hard work has already begun, the really hard work is about to begin,” Mr. McCormack said in announcing that Ms. Rice will go to Israel and the Palestinian Arab territories next week.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of Israel warned in numerous U.N. meetings last week against “raising the bar of expectations too high” before Annapolis, a Foreign Ministry aide told The New York Sun, speaking on condition of anonymity. Too many negotiations have collapsed in the past because of high hopes, the aide said.

Many Israelis fear a repeat of the failed Camp David summit conducted at the end of President Clinton’s tenure, and some note that in the West Bank, Palestinian Arab officials have already started to threaten a repeat of the violence that followed that summit.

“If we don’t prepare well for the conference so that it will result in something positive, the repercussions will be more dangerous than what happened after the failure of Camp David,” a close aide to Mr. Abbas, Azzam al-Ahmed, said, according to the Jerusalem Post.

“The Americans certainly hope that some positive statement will emerge out of the summit,” the opposition Likud Party’s foreign policy point man, Zalman Shoval, told the Sun. He noted that some of Mr. Olmert’s dovish advisers — led by his deputy, Haim Ramon — are urging major unilateral Israeli concessions that could lead to such a breakthrough.

But within Mr. Olmert’s Cabinet, Mr. Shoval added, a growing group of ministers who oppose such concessions is emerging. They include not only known hawks among the ruling Kadima Party — such as a former defense minister, Shaul Mofaz — but also traditional doves, such as Ms. Livni and the former prime minister during the Camp David talks, Ehud Barak, who now serves as defense minister.

In Likud’s view, Mr. Shoval said, Israel should not even start discussions before the Palestinian Arabs first accept Israel as a Jewish state, which he says entails publicly renouncing the demand to flood Israel with refugees from the 1947 war.

In recent days Mr. Abbas has hardened the line on the so-called right of return for refugees. In his General Assembly address last week, he said, “The entire Palestinian people” must approve any agreement with Israel. Ms. Livni, on the other hand, told the assembly that “just as Israel is homeland to the Jewish people, so Palestine will be established as the homeland and the national answer for the Palestinian people, including the refugees.”

Far from being deterred by such disagreements, Washington officials indicate that while both sides now harden positions to appease their political “flank,” they will come to terms before the summit. The discussions between Messrs. Olmert and Abbas “are becoming broader and deeper,” a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, David Foley, told the Sun, adding that Washington’s announcement of the Annapolis summit “has helped galvanize and provide unity of purpose to these efforts.”


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