Strategic Assessment

As expected, the November 26-27 international peace meeting at Annapolis ended with some modest achievements. As Israel and the Palestinians failed before Annapolis to agree on a joint statement of principles on the permanent status agreement, and actually failed to conclude any joint statement at all, it was decided to be less ambitious and turn the meeting into a launching pad for a negotiations process that will hopefully do what the parties were not able to do thus far, namely, deal with the core issues of the permanent status agreement. Significant also was the broad Arab and international (including Muslim) participation. It manifested the almost wall to wall support for progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the two-state solution. Prime Minister Olmert reciprocated in his statement by mentioning the Arab peace initiative very positively.