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Been there, done and said that....

Much has been said and written post the Annapolis meeting but Robert Fisk, venerable and the most experienced journalist and writer on the Middle East - after all he has lived in Beirut for some 30 years - puts the whole thing into context in his latest piece in The Independent:

"Haven't we been here before? Isn't Annapolis just a repeat of the White House lawn and the Oslo agreement, a series of pious claims and promises in which two weak men, Messrs Abbas and Olmert, even use the same words of Oslo.

"It is time for the cycle of blood, violence and occupation to end," the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday. But don't I remember Yitzhak Rabin saying on the White House lawn that, "it is time for the cycle of blood... to end"?

Jerusalem and its place as a Palestinian and Israeli capital isn't there. And if Israel receives acknowledgement that it is indeed an Israeli state – and in reality, of course, it is – there can be no "right of return" for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled (or whose families fled) what became Israel in 1948.

And what am I to make of the following quotation from the full text of the joint document: "The steering committee will develop a joint work plan and establish and oversee the work of negotiations (sic) teams to address all issues, to be headed by one lead representative from each party." Come again?

We went through all these steering committees before – and they never worked. True we've got a date of 12 December for the first session of this so-called "steering committee" and we have the faint hope from Mr Bush, embroidered, of course, with all the usual self-confidence, that we're going to have an agreement by 2008. But how can the Palestinians have a state without a capital in Jerusalem? How can they have a state when their entire territory has been chopped up and divided by Jewish settlements and the settler roads and, in parts, by a massive war?

Yes of course, we all want an end to bloodshed in the Middle East but the Americans are going to need Syria and Iran to support this – or at least Syrian support to control Hamas – and what do we get? Bush continues to threaten Iran and Bush tells Syria in Annapolis that it must keep clear of Lebanese elections, or else..."

Meanwhile, the LA Times reports on the unease and skepticism in the Arab world post the US Mid-East meeting:

"This week's Middle East conference in Annapolis, Md., has highlighted Arab unease over the ability and will of a weak U.S. president to deliver peace. At the same time, it has stoked fears that Israel has scored a public relations coup while refusing to concede on such core issues as Palestinian refugees and the fate of Jerusalem.

Arab nations, most notably Syria and Saudi Arabia, had been reluctant to attend the U.S.-sponsored talks, which are meant to set the framework for future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Now, with their prestige on the line, Arab officials are returning to their capitals with two tasks: convincing their populations that the summit was a crucial step toward a Palestinian state and keeping pressure on the U.S. and Israel to deliver on that goal.

It is a politically risky situation marked by skepticism and mistrust as well as occasional resolve. Arabs were encouraged that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was, at least temporarily, moved to center stage. But turmoil in Lebanon, war in Iraq and a rising Iran have complicated Middle East politics beyond the nuances of what unfolds between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Such instabilities, however, are often inextricably linked to the quest for a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Arab leaders worry that if Abbas is perceived to have gained little from Annapolis, it will strengthen Iranian-backed militant groups, such as Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. One of the main reasons Sunni Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia agreed to participate in the summit was to counter Iran's political involvement across the region, including its alliance with Syria and influence in Iraq."

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