Palestine-Mandate

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held a “summit” meeting in Jerusalem on Thursday, the first since the Annapolis Conference on 27 November (they were supposed to meet every two weeks thereafter — or maybe the two-weeks were supposed to start only after the first post-Annapolis session of the negotiating teams, which was supposed to be held on 12 or 13 December if I am not mistaken, then one was scheduled for 23 December, but was actually held on the 24th).

Palestinian officials said they were going to focus on one issue only — halting Israeli settlement activities.

What was the result?

Haaretz reported that “Israel will not build any new [n.b., read NEW] settlements and will stop expropriating land in the West Bank, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during a meeting in Jerusalem on Thursday. Olmert told Abbas that Israel ‘will take no steps that will hurt our ability to arrive at final status negotiations with the Palestinians’, and added that Israel wants to carry out the negotiations ‘in good faith’.” The Haaretz report is here.

YNet reported that “An informed Israeli official said that ‘the issues that have slowed down the negotiations have been neutralized’. According to sources in Jerusalem, during the two-hour meeting the leaders agreed that the sides would refrain from taking any steps that would hinder efforts to reach a permanent peace agreement, but Olmert did not guarantee Abbas that Israel would not build in Har Homa. ‘The prime minister has not promised to freeze tenders that have already been published and are already underway’, a senior Israeli official told reporters. However, officials said, the PM did reiterate his commitment not to confiscate land or set up additional settlements in the West Bank. Sources in Jerusalem told Ynet that, unlike in the past, the Palestinian demands raised during Thursday’s discussions would not stall the negotiations and would be dealt with in upcoming meetings”. The YNet report is posted here.

And, the Jerusalem Post reported that “There will be no new building tenders issued for construction in West Bank settlements and the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged Thursday during a meeting between Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams in Jerusalem, Army Radio reported…while the prime minister vowed that no new tenders would be issued for the east Jerusalem neighborhood, he insisted that tenders already approved could not be canceled”. The JPost report is here.

Before the meeting, Haaretz reported that an official in Jerusalem said: “We want to change the direction of the negotiations … The first two meetings of the negotiating teams failed and we would want to see positive progress.” The earlier Haaretz report is here.

While the Israeli press was upbeat, the international news agencies reported that the meeting appeared to have been a failure.

AP reported that “Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday held their first summit since renewing peace talks last month, but failed to resolve a dispute over planned Israeli construction in east Jerusalem. Abbas demanded at the meeting that Israel freeze its plan to expand the Jewish Har Homa neighborhood, Palestinian officials said. Abbas had appealed to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ahead of the meeting to pressure Israel to halt the project, Palestinian officials said. But an Israeli official said after the Olmert-Abbas meeting that Israel continued to claim a right to build in Har Homa, which lies in the eastern sector of Jerusalem that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed. Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as their future capital. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Abbas stressed the need to stop all settlement activities in order to facilitate the talks on a final peace accord, which were launched at an international conference on the Mideast in Annapolis, Md. But although he reported no progress on narrowing the gaps between the two sides, both sides described the two-hour meeting, held at Olmert’s official residence, as ‘positive’ — possibly in an effort to defuse tensions before the arrival in the region next month of President Bush. Bush is coming to the region for the first time in his seven-year tenure in a bid to build on momentum from the Annapolis conference”. The AP report is here.

Reuters reported that “Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert balked on Thursday at a total freeze in settlement activity, a key demand of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for progress in U.S.-backed peace talks. But officials on both sides said they would continue negotiations that have bogged down since Israel announced plans to build hundreds of ew homes in an area near Jerusalem known to Israelis as Har Homa and to Palestinians as Jabal Abu Ghneim. ‘We won’t agree with the Palestinians on every issue on day one’ [day one????], Olmert’s spokesman, Mark Regev, said after the two-hour meeting between the leaders at Olmert’s Jerusalem residence. ‘The Palestinians have their positions. We have ours. And the commitment is to work to overcome gaps’ … While Olmert agreed not to take any steps that might prejudice the outcome of the statehood negotiations, he reiterated Israel’s position on Har Homa, Regev said. A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: ‘The prime minister has not promised to freeze tenders that have already been published and are already under way’. Israel has a different interpretation of its road map obligations, arguing that construction in built-up areas of existing settlements is permissible as long as no new settlements are built and no additional occupied lands are confiscated. During the meeting, Olmert called on the Palestinians to meet their own road map commitments to rein in militants in the West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, a condition set by Israel for establishing a Palestinian state, officials said”.

On Friday, the Associated Press added that “Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said Friday that Olmert has not called off plans to build the new homes in Har Homa, and has not ordered a halt to all construction in West Bank settlements. Israel will not confiscate land for new settlement construction and will not ‘outwardly expand’ its West Bank settlements, Regev said, meaning that construction can continue inside the settlements’ existing borders. Israel also has canceled financial incentives designed to persuade Israelis to live in the West Bank, Regev said. ‘But in the Israeli perspective, the West Bank is not Jerusalem and Jerusalem is not the West Bank‘, he said.” This AP report is published here.

Here are some selected excerpts from the transcript issued by the U.S. State Department of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s interview with two journalists from the Associated Press, Anne Geary and Matthew Lee, on 13 December in Washington D.C.:

“QUESTION: On the Middle East. Today we had the first meeting of the Israeli-Palestinian delegation since Annapolis. Our report calls it a — you know, pretty heated exchange, a relatively short one that did not produce anything specific that either side could point to afterward. Is this a setback or a return to old thinking and are you worried that you may already be losing momentum?

SECRETARY RICE: No, this is just the turbulence of negotiations. There are going to be ups and downs. And they did meet and my understanding is that they’ll meet again pretty soon. They have some organizational work to do. But both of these parties are committed to moving this forward and they’re going to move it forward. It’s — but you’re going to have some good meetings and some not very good meetings.

QUESTION: I’m struck, though, by the difference in atmospherics. I mean, you have the leaders, all smiles and handshakes for a few days and then when it gets down to the guys who are actually going to write stuff, they’re, you know, having a food fight.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, it gets hard because you start to get specific about what is required and it gets hard. Anyone who has ever been through negotiations recognizes the first few meetings of negotiations. If you sat down at negotiations and went right to the answer, you — then you’d have a story. There is going to be a process of working through this, of putting specifics on the table, they’ve got to get a negotiating structure in place. I’ll have a chance to talk to the parties either — probably tomorrow, now given the late time, and I’ll undoubtedly see Palestinians and Israelis at the Paris meeting as well and I’ll be able to get an assessment of what lies ahead. But I have never known, studied, read about, or participated in a negotiation that wasn’t pretty tough at the beginning.

QUESTION: One follow — you’ve commented a bit on Israel’s Har Homa settlement plans sometime after the first news broke and I want to ask you about, what was your initial reaction to that? Did you feel sucker-punched by such a — by that announcement so close after Annapolis?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, the first thing I wanted to know was what happened, because the — so we sought clarification from the Israeli Government and they talked about this as something that had been long planned. But I did think that it had the potential, as I said, to — it wasn’t going to contribute to an atmosphere of confidence. It had the potential to undermine the atmosphere of confidence. But look, it’s time to now recognize that we’re in a phase where they now need to negotiate. Ultimately, the best way to deal with all of these problems is to have an agreement and firmly outline the borders of a Palestinian state. Then everybody can know what’s permitted where, but — that is the key. But it’s also going to be important, as we go through what is going to admittedly be a very difficult process, that both sides — and I want to emphasize both sides do everything that they can to live up to their roadmap obligations and to do everything that they can to enhance confidence…

QUESTION: The reports out of Gaza seem to be getting worse by the day. We had reports today of people dying for lack of access to medical care, a shortage of water and so forth. You’ve said you will not stand for a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but do you think one is building? Are you essentially tacitly allowing one to happen because it may speed the exit of Hamas?

SECRETARY RICE: No, because innocent people shouldn’t suffer because of the terrible policies of Hamas in terms of the humanitarian side. No, we’re following the humanitarian situation very closely and sometimes, it requires very specific actions about what kinds of equipment, medicine, food can get in. It relates, of course, to issues of electricity where the Israelis, in their own processes, have been told to be extremely careful about making certain that there’s electrical supply to Gaza. But we get reports on the situation and I know that the situation is difficult, but we don’t intend to allow it to become a humanitarian crisis”…

ON HER PRIORITIES:
“I think there are several very high priorities, and if we can leave them in better shape — obviously, the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the Annapolis process as it’s now called, is a very big issue and to leave that in a much better place than it was when we came would, I think, reverberate in many important ways throughout the region, and not just the region of the Middle East… I hear from our friends in Southeast Asia like Indonesia, for instance, or Malaysia how important it would be to them…”

As Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams are preparing to meet in Jerusalem’s King David Hotel within the hour, news reports describe the following atmospherics:

Palestinian victims of yesterday’s Israeli attack on Gaza are mourned and buried.

Some 17 Qassam rockets have been launched from Gaza into Israel, injuring several people in Sderot (Israeli media indicates that Islamic Jihad, and not Hamas, took credit for firing 11 of the rockets).

At least 13 Palestinians were arrested by the IDF in the West Bank on Wednesday morning — 11 from Ramallah, and 2 from Bethlehem (where Quartet Special Envoy Tony Blair reportedly stayed overnight last night in the city’s best hotel — not named in initial reports, but Ma’an news agency reported later that Blair stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel — to show how Bethlehem is a safe destination for tourists this Christmas season).

Photo taken by Rev. Julie Rowe of the huge poster put up
by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism
just outside the main Israeli checkpoint into Bethlehem.
For an idea of scale, that’s a full size tourist bus entering the gate
at the left side of the photo.

The 307 controversial new housing units being planned at Har Homa are not all: Haaretz reported today that “There are hundreds, even thousands, of planned housing units in the West Bank that have building permits and do not need any further government approval before their construction can begin, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, the head of the Civil Administration, told the interministerial committee on illegal outposts Tuesday. Their construction ‘could cause similar embarrassment to that created by the publication of the tender for building in Har Homa’, he added … Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni agreed. ‘Another advert in the papers for a construction tender could ruin the negotiations with the Palestinians’, she said”. This report in Haaretz is published here.

And, Haaretz reported today, “The security cabinet was set to meet Wednesday to discuss the situation in the Gaza Strip after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Tuesday to remove the threat of Qassam rockets from the southern part of the country. ‘The situation in the south of the country, in light of the Qassam rocket fire, has generated a difficult reality’, Olmert told an Institute for National Security Studies conference in Tel Aviv Tuesday night. ‘We will have to act on this matter in the necessary manner, with the appropriate dose and the right timing, without exaggerating and creating unrealistic expectations. We will not rest until the Qassam rocket threat is completely removed from Sderot and the western Negev’.” Haaretz reports, in the same article, that “At Wednesday’s cabinet meeting, ministers were due to hear intelligence reports from security officials as well as reports from Foreign Ministry officials regarding political options … Some two months ago, the cabinet decided on a series of sanctions that would hit the civilian infrastructure of Gaza, including a reduction in electricity and fuel supply. However, several legal opinions on the matter have since rendered most of the cabinet decisions irrelevant. A senior government official said that at the time, the security establishment came out against a wide-scale military campaign in Gaza, but that the ministers would be hearing an updated security assessment“. ‘Since the last cabinet [meeting], there has been movement on the security establishment position, and therefore the ministers need to hear about it from the primary sources’, the government official said”. This Haaretz report hinting heavily that a military operation in Gaza may be imminent is posted here.

Jeff Halper, the American-Israeli Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Againt House Demolitions, and the author of the Matrix of Control, an attempt to describe the complicated administration and infrastructure of Israeli control over the occupied West Bank, has just written in an article published on Counterpunch.org that “Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said recently that ‘Annapolis is a landmark on the path to negotiations and of the genuine effort to achieve the realization of the vision of two nations: the State of Israel–the nation of the Jewish people; and the Palestinian state–the nation of the Palestinian people’. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Now look at the pre-conditions Israel has imposed just in the two weeks before Annapolis:

Redefining Phase 1 of the Road Map. The first phase of the Road Map, the very basis of negotiations, calls for Israel to freeze its settlement construction. That is something Israel will obviously not do. So, on the basis of a letter former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon received from President Bush in 2004–a fundamental change in American policy that nevertheless does not commit the other members of the Road Map ‘Quartet’, Europe, Russia and the UN–Israel announced that it defines the areas considered ‘occupied’ by the Quartet as only those areas falling outside its major settlement blocs and ‘greater’ Jerusalem. Thus, unilaterally, Israel (and the US apparently) reduced the territory to be negotiated with the Palestinians from 22 per cent to a mere 15 per cent, and that truncated into fragmented cantons.

Requiring recognition of Israel as a ‘Jewish state’. The Palestinians are required to formally recognize the state of Israel. They did so already in 1988 when they accepted the two-state solution, at the outset of the Oslo process and repeatedly over the past two decades. Now comes a fresh demand: that before any negotiations they recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Not only does that introduce an entirely new element that Israel knows the Palestinians will not accept, but it prejudices the equal status of Palestinian citizens of Israel, a full 20 per cent of the Israeli population. This leads the way to transfer, to ethnic cleansing. Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, recently told a press conference that the future of Israel’s Arab citizens is in a future Palestinian state, not in Israel itself.

Creating insurmountable political obstacles. Two weeks before Annapolis was to convene, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, passed a law that a majority of two-thirds would be required to approve any change in the status of Jerusalem, an impossible threshold.

Delayed implementation. OK, the Israeli government says, we’ll negotiate. But the implementation of any agreement will wait on the complete cessation of any resistance on the part of the Palestinians. Given the fact that Israel views any resistance, armed or non-violent, as a form of terrorism, this erects yet another insurmountable obstacle before any peace process.

Declaring a ‘transitional’ Palestinian state. If all else fails–actually negotiating with the Palestinians or relinquishing the occupation not being an option–the US, at Israel’s behest, can manage to skip Phase 1 of the Road Map and go directly to Phase 2, which calls for a ‘transitional’ Palestinian state before, in Phase 3, its actual borders, territory and sovereignty are agreed upon. This is the Palestinians’ nightmare: being locked indefinitely in the limbo of a ‘transitional’ state. For Israel it is ideal, since it offers the possibility of imposing borders and expanding into the Palestinian areas unilaterally yet, since its fait accompli is only ‘transitional’, seeming to conform to the Road Map’s requirement to decide the final issues through negotiations…

[T]he issue for Israel is rather how to transform its Occupation from what the world considers a temporary situation to a permanent political fact accepted by the international community, de facto if need be or, if apartheid can be finessed in the form of a two-state solution, then formally.

And here’s the dilemma, and the source of debate within the Israeli government: does Israel continue with the strategy that has served it so well these past 40 years, delaying or prolonging negotiations so as to maintain the status quo, all the while strengthening its hold over the Palestinian territories or, at this unique but fleeting moment in history when George Bush is still in office, does it try to nail it all down, forcing upon the Palestinians a transitional state within the framework of the Road Map?

Olmert, following Sharon, is pushing for the former. Netanyahu, Lieberman, the right-wing (including many in Olmert’s own party) and, significantly, Labour Chairman and Defence Minister Ehud Barak, always a military hawk, are resisting out of fear that even a process of pretend negotiations might get out of hand, creating expectations on Israel.

Better, they say, to stay with the tried-and-true policy of status quo which can, if cleverly managed, extend indefinitely. Besides, Bush is a lame duck, and no pressure will be put on Israel until June 2009, at least six months after the next American president is inaugurated, Democrat or Republican. We’re just fine until then; why rock the boat? The only tricky time for Israel is the two years in the midst of a presidential term. We can weather that. Annapolis? We’ll try cautiously for apartheid, hoping that Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas], prodded by Quartet envoy Tony Blair, will play the role of collaborator. If that doesn’t work, well, status quo is always a reliable default”.   The commentary from Jeff Halper is published here.

The first formal Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in seven years are due to open Wednesday in Jerusalem at the King David Hotel.

Yes, the King David Hotel.  At 12:30 pm Jerusalem time.  The new spokesperson for the Israeli Foreign Ministry said he expects this first session to be short and procedural.

The Palestinian delegation is upset at the Israeli plan to issue tenders for 307 new homes in the Har Homa settlement just outside Bethlehem — and about a violent Israeli incursion into Gaza yesterday which left at least 8 people dead, more than a dozen injured, and at least 40 “detained” for questioning.  Hamas called on the Palestinian delegation to boycott today’s session because of the attack.

Kol Israel Radio says that Wednesday’s session will be the beginning of “final status” negotiations.  It wasn’t previously clear that the parties had reached that point — they had a hard time agreeing on the Joint Understanding that their American hosts presented them with in the Annapolis event on 27 November.

“Final status” issues (like borders, refugees, and Jerusalem)  were, under the Oslo Accords (1993 to, say, 1997 .. or maybe 1999), to be discussed only at the very end of the process — though the issue of a Palestinian state was not mentioned under Oslo, and would have had to come even after the “final status” negotiations.  In Camp David peace talks in July 2000, “amazing concessions” were supposedly put on the table without any preparation by then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s team.  In the Road Map, presented in April 2003, a Palestinian State was supposed to be the result of the completion of two out of three phases.  Right now, Phase I has not even been completed…  But, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice apparently believes that front-loading these talks might be somehow useful.

In any case, neither Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert nor Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will be present.

The two teams — who met once already this week — will be headed by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian negotiator Ahmad Qurei (Abu Alaa).

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that it has learned that Israeli officials want its bilateral negotiations with Palestinians that are scheduled to start on 12 December “somewhere in the region” to be “strictly bilateral” — without any American presence in the room.

However, the JPost says, the U.S. apparently still wants to be present at these “Steering Committee” meetings.

The Israeli team at these bilateral talks — which will be the first of three post-Annapolis tracks — will be headed by the tough Tzipi Livni, Israel’s Foreign Minister, the JPost says. It adds that “Running in parallel with the Steering Committee, and to oversee its work, Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas are to meet every other week”.

The JPost says that the post-Annapolis process is expected to operate on three separate tracks: “The second track is the road map implementation track, including the US monitoring mechanism. The sides are currently in the process of structuring just how this mechanism will work … Much of the work of developing this mechanism is taking place in the US since Washington will be the judge of when various commitments under the road map have been met. The US, therefore, is entering unchartered waters where it essentially will need to serve as “judge and jury” and need to do so in a way that will satisfy both sides.”

The third post-Annapolis track. according to this JPost report: ” is enlisting the Arab countries and the international community to produce a favorale regional environment that will advance a two-state solution. The idea is to get the Arab world and the international community to give both parties the space, time and legitimacy to make compromises. The next key landmark on this track is the meeting of donor countries in Paris on December 17. Both Jerusalem and Washington will be watching carefully to see to what extent the Arab countries that were present at Annapolis - and, as such, tacitly endorsed the idea of a two-state solution - would ‘their money where their mouths are’ and take practical steps to help create Palestinian governing institutions that would help make a two-state solution possible. Many of these countries have pledged large sums of money to the PA in the past but have not delivered, and their actions at the donors’ conference will be carefully monitored for indications as to whether they are indeed supporting a two-state solution. One of the goals of the Annapolis process is to de-legitimize Hamas in the eyes of Palestinians and the Arab world by showing the PA as a viable alternative to it and building up the PA”.

This JPost report is published here.

The Israeli media is reporting that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have been called to the White House later Wednesday for some kind of formal or “ceremonial” launch of the agreed direct negotiations.

Haaretz reports that “U.S. President George W. Bush invited the pair to the White House to ceremonially inaugurate the first formal, direct negotiations in seven years. Bush planned to meet separately with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday, then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and finally to get them together for an afternoon session and declaring the talks formally under way. Israel and the Palestinians will begin final-status negotiations on December 12 … Both sides agreed that Washington will determine whether those obligations have been fulfilled. Bush has chosen General Jim Jones, a former commander of both NATO and the American forces in Europe, to serve as the arbiter, and Jones is due to arrive in the region in the coming days“… The Haaretz report of the formal launch of direct negotiations later today is here.

This same Haaretz story reports that “Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni urged the Arab states to ‘get off the fence’ and understand that normalization is not a prize for Israel. She proposed normalization in stages. Addressing the Palestinians, she urged them to stop mourning Israel’s establishment and instead build a state of their own“.

In an interesting behind-the-scenes story, Haaretz reports separately that “The joint Israeli-Palestinian declaration issued at Annapolis Tuesday was completed less than half an hour beforehand, Israeli and Palestinian sources told Haaretz. According to the Palestinian sources, yet another round of Israeli-Palestinian talks on the document broke off at midnight on Monday with no results. At that point, Saeb Erekat replaced Ahmed Qureia, the head of the Palestinian negotiating team, and the talks resumed, but still no progress was made. The next morning, after the parties already had landed in Annapolis, the talks continued. Finally, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas out of a three-way meeting with U.S. President George Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and pressured him to approve the draft document, the sources said. Eventually, he did so, enabling Bush to read it to the conference. The Israeli sources noted that Bush was clearly pushing for the document: At his three-way meeting with Abbas and Olmert Tuesday morning, they said, the first words out of his mouth were, ‘What’s happening with the joint declaration?’ But the Israelis had a different version of what had happened: They said the Monday night talks with Erekat produced several agreements, but the next morning, the Palestinians changed their mind. That, said the Israelis, already had happened several times during talks on the declaration, but they were shocked that the Palestinians were doing it again at this late date and on such fundamental issues as a timetable for negotiations and reference to the road map peace plan. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who headed the Israeli team, lost her temper and told Qureia to ‘take it or get lost’, the sources said. As the difficulties mounted, there were also fierce arguments within the Israeli team: Livni very much wanted a joint declaration, but some members of the team said it was ‘a waste of time’, and suggested she forget about it. Olmert, however, sided with Livni, and the Americans’ determination tipped the scales…” A Haaretz report on last-minute manoeuvers is here.

Contrary to other reports of pessimism (which is definitely greater on the Palestinian side), Kol Israel radio reported this evening that “sources in Jerusalem say US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s decision not to visit the region before the summit signals that preparations are moving ahead and there is no need for intervention”.

The Kol Israel story also reported that “Prime Minister Ehud Olmert planned to convene the Israeli negotiating team headed by Foreign Minister Tzippi Livni at his residence Saturday night as part of preparations for the planned Annapolis peace summit. Senior officials and advisors from the prime minister’s office, foreign ministry and defense ministry are expected to take part. A Kol Yisrael reporter says the consultations will address gestures towards the Palestinians … ”

http://reka.iba.org.il/.

It had been expected that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice would return to Jerusalem (and Ramallah) around the 15th of November, in what was expected to be a final pre-Annapolis push.

But, Kol Israel Radio reports this morning that Israeli officials have been informed that Rice has no plans to travel here in the next few days.

In what may seem like a contradiction — as Rice’s presence was supposed to be supportive in helping Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to overcome their differences — this is being taken as a confirmation of reports this week that progress between the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators has not been sufficient.

It is one more signal that the Annapolis peace conference (or “meeting”) may be held later than reported.

But, as Rice indicated yesterday, she expects that the Annapolis event will take place.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice did an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in Nashville, Tennessee on 13 November 2007. Here is an excerpt:

QUESTION: We’ve seen reports that it looks like now the Annapolis meeting is going to be a day [just one day]. That’s what’s being reported.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, let’s wait to — first, to call it; and secondly, to invite people; and then to schedule it.

QUESTION: So it’s not even safe to say that it’s definitely happening?

SECRETARY RICE: Oh, it’s going to happen.

QUESTION: Okay.

SECRETARY RICE: But look, we’ll look at the scheduling for it. I don’t expect it to be going on for several days, most certainly.

QUESTION: Okay.

SECRETARY RICE: It’s, after all, an opportunity to launch a process, not to try and conclude it at Annapolis.
(more…)