Bush’s Mideast conference: ‘No one seems to know what is happening’

November 19, 2007

For years, the White House has chosen to put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the backburner. Actually, that’s probably overly generous — the Bush gang has preferred to ignore the problem altogether.

The good news is, the administration is now poised to hold a major Middle East peace conference. The bad news is, no one seems to have any idea who’s coming, when they’ll meet, or what they’ll do.

A few days after Thanksgiving, President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plan to open a meeting in Annapolis to launch the first round of substantive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks during Bush’s presidency.

But no conference date has been set. No invitations have been issued. And no one really agrees on what the participants will actually talk about once they arrive at the Naval Academy for the meeting, which is intended to relaunch Bush’s stillborn “road map” plan to create a Palestinian state.

The anticipation surrounding the meeting has heightened the stakes for other countries seeking invites. If Turkey comes, Greece wants a seat. So does Brazil, which has more Arabs than the Palestinian territories. Norway hosted an earlier round of peacemaking in Oslo, so it wants a role. Japan wants to do more than write checks for Palestinians.

“No one seems to know what is happening,” one senior Arab envoy said last week, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid appearing out of the loop. “I am completely lost.”

A senior administration official, described by the WaPo as being “deeply involved in the preparations” for the conference, conceded that he or she “can’t connect the dots myself.”

To be sure, brokering Mideast peace is exceedingly difficult. But if the Bush administration could at least maintain the appearance of competence, it might instill a little more confidence.

The invitation list has created its own headaches. Administration officials were split over whether to invite Syria, but Rice prevailed in that dispute by suggesting that the United States instead invite an entity called the “follow-up committee” of the Arab League, which happens to include Syria along with nearly a dozen other Arab states. The solution put the burden on Syria to accept without making it look like a diplomatic cave-in to conservatives.

An Arab diplomat said last week the list of invitees could easily reach 50 nations once all diplomatic considerations are addressed.

Every day last week, reporters pestered the State Department’s spokesman, Sean McCormack, for an update on the invitations. Each time, he demurred. “Once the invitations are issued, I would expect that most, if not all, of the invitees will reply, ‘Yes, we’re coming,’ ” he said Friday. “I think they’ll be able to get here.”

Possibly, as early as one week from today, 50 independent delegations may get together to discuss Middle East peace, but as of now, invitations haven’t gone out.

Great.

It is a -good- thing that the Administration doesn’t have a clue what to do here – once they have a policy, they will want to attack someone, presumably in this case the Gaza Strip will be the target (altho Syria would also be a distinct possibility and I wouldn’t rule out a sudden blitzkrieg on Oslo, for that matter)

  • Is Rice even capable of organizing a faculty departmental meeting when she goes back to Stanford?

    Apparently not. Better get her a good executive assistant. Maybe expand the assistant’s qualifications beyond “Loyal Bushie.”

  • Note to America: George Bush threw a party—and nobody showed up.

    Now, what does THAT do for all those 28-percenters out there in Doofus-Loofus land?

  • I learned something new on “Wait wait don”t tell me” (NPRs game show) this weekend. The israleis have taken Condi’s signature style and turned it into a word – lecondel:

    “NYT – The American-sponsored Middle East peace conference expected by the end of the month looks to be thin on content, mostly serving as a stage to begin formal negotiations on a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

    Israeli and American officials have been so busy dampening expectations that they are not even calling the event a conference anymore, instead referring to it merely as a “meeting.””

    http://agonist.org/20071112/lecondel
    The long buildup to Annapolis, together with Ms. Rice’s many trips to the region, have given birth to a new verb in Israeli government circles: “lecondel,” meaning, to come and go for meetings that produce few results. The word is based on Ms. Rice’s first name.

  • Apparently there are whole bunches of Arabs in Brazil, yet nobody mentions Brazil as a “hotbed of jihadism” or anything like that. What have they got going on down there that we might be able to learn something from?

  • Knowing the agenda helps. Presumably, this conference will show the Palestinians that peace is possible and financial aide available if they drop their absolutist demands. Compromise remains a good word that seems difficult to translate into Arabic. The status quo, of course, hurts everyone except the jihadist fanatics, tribal dictators, and arms dealers.

    I hope, but know it is a very longshot – especially with this cast of characters – that a reasonable compromise can be reached. I’d even support Bush for a Nobel Peace Prize if he can get the parties to sign a real peace treaty that actually brings an end to violence in Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon.

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