CAIRO — 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.
"Stagnation in the peace process has increased the appeal for extremist ideologies. Feelings of despair and frustration have reached a dangerously high level," said Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal. "It is time to bring this conflict to an end, and to enable the people of the region to divert their energies from war and destruction to peace and development."
State-controlled Iranian media seized on the Annapolis conference to assert that neither an Israeli-Palestinian peace nor a wider Middle East calm was possible without the blessing of Tehran, which Washington did not invite to the summit, partly in protest of Iran's nuclear program. Also not invited were Hezbollah or Hamas, which took control of the Gaza Strip in June, driving out Abbas' Fatah movement.
