Hype and retrenchment

If ever a time so well defined the shrinking universe the Arabs inhabit, and the progressive retrenchment of the diplomatic power it wields in world affairs, it is now, on the eve of the much-trumpeted Middle East peace conference scheduled to be held in Maryland late next month, to which delegates allegedly from 36 nations will be invited, including 12 Arab states and 3 non-Arab Muslim states, along with the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the G8.

A fancy parley, you say? Sure, and what is even fancier still is the venue: the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, a 300-year old city, rich in history, that had hosted the Continental Congress and was one of the nation's early capitals.

The American Revolution drew to a close there, when Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris in 1784 and effectively established the United States of America as a nation.

The Bush administration chose it not only because it provides a secure facility, a stone-throw away from Washington, but, unlike the presidential retreat at Camp David and the Wye River Plantation on the Eastern Shore, it will not evoke memories of failed efforts to resolve the Palestine conflict.

The US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will host the meeting and President George W. Bush will address it.

Fitting, is it not, that Annapolis would be hosting a summit aimed at founding a new nation, this time for the Palestinians, well over two centuries later. Fitting too to recall that the country sponsoring this summit invented hype. Hype for the sake of hype. Hype without substance.

Stay with me here. The term "summit" was coined, or given its current diplomatic twist, by Winston Churchill - that colonial bigot, counter-revolutionary and cold-warrior - in 1950, when he called for a meeting with Stalin. "It is not easy to see," he asserted, "how matters could be worsened by a parley at the summit".

But Churchill was wrong, as he had been more often than not in his long career as a statesman.

Parley

It is indeed easy to see how matters "could be worsened at the summit".

The parley at Munich in 1938 allowed Hitler to believe that Britain and France would not be concerned about his adventurism in Central Europe; the parley at Yalta in 1945 fed the illusion that the West could enjoy an entente cordiale with Stalin's regime; and the Kruschev-Kennedy parley at Vienna in 1961 led the former, to believe, mistakenly, that the American president was an immature and inexperienced statesman, which meant the Soviet Union could pursue an irresponsible policy abroad, including the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba the following year, a reckless move that brought the two superpowers a hair short of starting a world war.

Rarely have expectations been so low for a "parley" so hyped as the one in Annapolis. The Arabs will go there not only to negotiate from a position of weakness but to retrench further on their demands.

The Israelis, with their enabler and patron in Washington standing firmly behind them, have repeatedly made it quite clear that the illegal colonies they have built over the last 40 years will stay, the right of return is not an option open to the refugees, a Palestinian state will be considered but only as a truncated, fissured entity in what will be left of the occupied territories, and what will be conceded to Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem will be less than what they were offered at Camp David in 2000.

Inflation is just as prevalent a phenomenon in the diplomatic world, their argument goes, as it is in the financial world. What is remarkable, indeed what is so pitiful, about all this is how over the last 40 years the more Arabs retrenched on their position, the more that retrenchment was met with more demands from Israel.

Note how the Arab world went from its affirmative three "Nos" at the Khartoum Conference in 1967 to its plaintive Arab Peace Initiative in 2002 (offering Israel total recognition in return for its evacuation of the occupied territories), and the Palestinians went from their fanciful demand for a "secular, democratic state" in the whole of historic Palestine in the 1970s to their Johnny-be-good acquiescence to a separate state in the West Bank and Gaza in the 1980s. All, of course, to no avail.

In Annapolis - and put the name in your diplomatic lexicon for future reference - Arabs will be expected to retrench further still, and Israelis to have a free ride. If any agreement is reached, at best it will be an agreement on where to hold the next wretched summit. No more, no less.

The American media are trumpeting the Annapolis get-together (for that's all it is) as Bush's last and most dramatic effort to breathe life into the Middle East peace process. True, but what will be breathed there will be a lot of hot air.

And if your preference is hype, you'll find it there in spades. Hype without substance. And, yes, lest we forget, there'll be pressure by US officials to have a photo-op with the top Saudi diplomat shaking hands with his Israeli counterpart. Oh, the horror, the horror!

Fawaz Turki is a veteran journalist, lecturer and author of several books, including 'The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile'. He lives in Washington D.C.