Four days of shuttle diplomacy between Jerusalem, Ramallah and Cairo has apparently convinced U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that it would be wise to postpone the much publicized upcoming Mideast summit, originally scheduled to be held November 26 in Annapolis. Rice told reporters after meeting Wednesday with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni that she would “continue to say that the summit will be held in the fall,” but that “there are two months in the fall, November and December.” No new date was given for the conference. The Secretary of State acknowledged that the obstacles to reaching any form of agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority are daunting, a fact echoed by every leader in the region. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit warned not to rush into a meeting without agreements. U.S. State Department officials expressed equally pessimistic predictions Monday after Rice had met separately with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas said bluntly in a news conference Wednesday that the summit would be a waste of time that would be “in no one’s interests” if Israel came unprepared to agree to hand over Judea, Samaria, Gaza and half of Jerusalem, to be established as the capital of a new PA state. He added that he and other PA officials “are not interested in participating in a conference that will not bear fruit.” Most of the region’s leaders have informed the Bush administration that little is likely to be accomplished at the summit other than more posturing, seeing as the Israeli and PA positions are still poles apart on most issues. Prime Minister Olmert has made numerous concessions and "goodwill gestures" to the PA in order to prop up Abbas’s government in the past few months, with little to show for it. Hundreds of thousands of shekels in tax monies collected on behalf of the PA, withheld after the Hamas terrorist organization took control of the government in 2006, were transferred to the Abbas government months ago as an initial gesture. Despite promises that none of the funds would be used to pay Hamas, money nonetheless found its way to Hamas employees’ pockets. Relaxation of security measures at IDF checkpoints around the country were met with claims of “not good enough.” The release of hundreds of PA terrorists being held in Israeli jails was met with similar contempt. Amnesty for hundreds more terrorists who were still at large, on condition they signed a document promising not to take up arms and return to their violent ways was also minimized. Many of those who were pardoned did not bother to fulfill their end of the deal and skipped the signatures and the commitment. Several of those have since been caught planning and attempting to carry out more terrorist attacks. Promises by Abbas to crack down on terrorism emanating from PA-controlled areas were only partially kept: while Abbas’s security forces allegedly did make an effort to reduce terrorism from Fatah-controlled areas in Judea and Samaria, they had lukewarm success But the commitments made by Abbas were broken repeatedly by Fatah-sponsored terrorists from the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades organization who were caught attempting to carry out attacks against Israeli civilians. The lack of Abbas’s ability or willingness to match Israel’s largesse in security risks taken in the hopes of making progress in talks has slowed down the Olmert government’s race toward the negotiation table, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by the U.S. and others. “I want to stress that the summit is the first point in an ongoing process,” Rice told reporters. “There will be an international conference…but there [also] has to be a day after.” Public Security Minister Avi Dichter was equally skeptical about what could be accomplished at the summit, saying he had a problem with demands by the U.S. that Israel “show some creativity” in finding a way to reach an agreement with the PA. Speaking at Tel Aviv University, Dichter asked, “What does that mean? How many Palestinians were murdered because we didn’t vacate outposts, as opposed to how many Israelis were killed because the Palestinians didn’t fulfill their end of the agreements?” "Before Annapolis, if we go to Annapolis, it is important to give the Authority a boost and doff our hats for the efforts they will make, but we should take care to take off the hat without the head," he said. Dichter also voiced opposition to releasing convicted terrorist Marwan Barghouti as part of a prisoner swap deal to secure the release of kidnapped IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit. "He may truly want peace, but we are not an experimental station for the Barghouti Center," he said. Shalit was abducted by Hamas terrorists in a cross-border raid from Gaza in June 2006. His whereabouts and condition are unknown.
