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US Secretary of State Rice is working alone within the American administration to push the Israeli-Palestinian political negotiations forward.

Last November, U.S. President George W. Bush made his case before the representatives of over forty countries gathered in Annapolis, Maryland, for resolving all outstanding issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and establishing a Palestinian state.  He proclaimed before a skeptical audience that remembered the failures of Camp David in 2000 and his own administration’s stillborn Road Map for Peace in 2003, “The time is right.  The cause is just.”  He gave a personal pledge “to devote my effort during my time as President to do all I can to help you achieve this ambitious goal [of reaching a peace agreement by the end of 2008].”  With less than five months left, it now seems that everyone, including his own advisers, expect him to fail.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qurei have been meeting regularly for several months, with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joining occasionally, to discuss the so-called “final status” issues: Israel’s borders, the fate of the Palestinian refugees, and sovereignty over Jerusalem and its holy sites.  All three sides have used the secrecy surrounding the contents of the meetings to suggest that significant progress is being made towards an agreement.  Recent events suggest otherwise.  As the Forward’s Nathan Guttman put it, “The skepticism is palpable, however, among American, Israeli and Palestinian officials alike.”

Two days before he announced his intention to resign in September amid a corruption investigation that could end in his indictment, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert broke from the consensus on working for a comprehensive settlement last week.  Any agreement that includes the issue of Jerusalem, he said, is off the table for this year.  An Israeli spokesman reiterated that while an agreement on all other issues could probably still be reached by the end of the year, negotiations on Jerusalem should wait for 2009.

In response, senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said in a press conference, “either everything will be agreed or nothing will be agreed.”  While he did not rule out a deal by the end of the year, Erekat expressed discomfort with the U.S.-imposed timetable.  “I don't think that time should be a sword over our necks,” he said.  Another Palestinian Authority official, however, was less circumspect, telling the Jerusalem Post that there was “zero” chance of a deal this year because of Olmert’s resignation.

At the Annapolis conference, the U.S. assumed sole responsibility for monitoring Israeli and Palestinian compliance with their Phase I commitments under the Road Map, while the parties agreed to move forward in parallel on Phase III negotiations.  The Road Map obligates Israel, among other things, to freeze “all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)” and to dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001.  Despite objections from Rice, Israel has continued building in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  Israel even recently reneged on a 2007 deal with the U.S. to not build in the Jordan Valley settlement of Maskiot, authorizing the construction of twenty new homes there.

“We want peace and agreement,” said Erekat in a recent interview, “but the one who wants agreement should force the Israeli Government to halt its settlement activities, end the blockade and closures, and stop imposing facts on the ground.”  When President Mahmoud Abbas expressed Palestinian opposition to continued Israeli settlement expansion in a meeting with President Bush earlier this year, Bush reportedly said that he was focusing instead on “the big picture.”  Likewise, Rice has downplayed the relevance of Israel’s Phase I obligations in light of the prospect of concluding Phase III negotiations.

While Secretary of State Rice insists that “there is still time” for negotiations to bear fruit and that the parties “will keep working for that goal,” the White House does not share her optimism.  U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams, who handles Middle East issues, reportedly told a group of American Jewish leaders recently that the ongoing negotiations were a waste of time.  Any agreement reached between Livni and Qurei, he argued, would only be a personal agreement between the two of them and not between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.