LONDON (DAWN)-- There is news of an impending peace conference in Washington in November, bringing Israelis, Palestinians and as yet unnamed Arab states together around the table.

This follows on from President Bush’s July call for an international conference to help jumpstart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
But it might also be a belated and inadequate response to the earlier call by Saudi Arabia for Israel to agree to peace negotiations that would terminate the conflict between Israel and the Arabs.
In 2002 the Saudis had presented a plan trading Israel’s total withdrawal from the 1967-occupied territories for normalization of relations with Israel. They reiterated this in 2005 and again this year.
Israel never responded and it is not clear which of the Arab states will come to the November conference, if any. Amr Moussa, the Arab League’s secretary-general, asserted on Sept 13 that none of them would attend until the conference’s goals were clarified. Saudi Arabia has also come out against participating if there is no pre-agreed agenda.
From what is known of the U.S. initiative, it is vague on detail and limited in its goals. America is apparently seeking no more than the meeting’s support for a statement of principles to be drawn up between Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.
It wishes for the ‘moderate’ Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, also to be there to give the Israeli-Palestinian arrangements Arab backing. The conference should end with a set of declarations but has no provision for negotiations between the parties.
The U.S. secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, will be visiting Israel and the West Bank this month to “build upon some of the progress made by the two parties themselves” and to encourage them to reach an understanding before the conference. Phrases like “knocking heads together” and “rolling up their sleeves” are being used again, as if the problem were one of intransigence or laziness.
Readers may well have a moment of déjà vu. In September 1993, an agreement of principles was drawn up between another Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and another Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, memorably commemorated by that famous handshake on the White House lawn. The formula then will be repeated now, except with different players and with much less chance of success.
The Oslo agreement was supposed eventually to resolve the conflict, but instead, it initiated years of futile peacemaking, broken agreements and interminable negotiations.
It ended with the second Intifada and the current crisis. This conference will fare even worse. It is a transparent botch-up aiming to convince world opinion that the U.S. is serious about solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while paving the way for Israel’s acceptance in the region at the cheapest price.
For, if the Arab states can be persuaded to sit at the same table with Israel, without its having to comply with any of their demands, it would be a real coup for the Jewish state. That is what underlies U.S. and Israeli eagerness for Saudi and Emirates’ participation in the conference. In this sense, the Palestinian presence could be seen as the pretext for this Israeli penetration of Arab ranks.
The rhetoric that the meeting will outline the principles to establish a Palestinian state and suggest ways of resolving the core issues of borders, Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem — all of which featured in the Oslo agreement and failed — should fool no one. It will be just another exercise in futility.
For, as always in this conflict, two parallel tracks operate: the reality on the ground and the fantasy world of Israel’s allies. In this world, the Palestinians will be content with being split into Hamas and Fatah supporters, into the West Bank and Gaza, meekly accept Abbas for their representative, although he does not lead the majority of Palestinians, and ignore Gaza. In this world also, the two-state solution is still an option, and needs only for Palestinians to renounce terrorism and make themselves worthy of statehood.
To shore up this fantasy, America is strengthening Abbas with funds and training for his security forces, while Britain’s Tony Blair is helping the West Bank population to develop civil institutions.
In this way, the cozy illusion of ‘moderate’ Palestinians (i.e. those in the West Bank) humbly grateful for western tutelage and willing to pay any price for the promise of statehood is essential.
It allows Israel’s allies to maintain the pretence of a legitimate peace process, while ignoring the real situation. A cursory look at this will show what a charade the forthcoming peace conference will be.
Thanks to unrelenting Israeli colonization over the 40 years since the 1967 war, today there is no contiguous Palestinian territory left in the West Bank on which to construct a viable Palestinian state. The system of Israeli checkpoints and closures has interrupted continuity between towns and villages, and Jewish settlements, occupying large tracts of land, have consolidated that break-up.
The barrier wall, which is nearly two-thirds built, has ensured that the best land is annexed to the Israeli side, leaving the less fertile areas to the Palestinians. Currently, 46 per cent of West Bank territory is under Israeli control, and the whole of East Jerusalem, and there is no link between the West Bank and Gaza.
The 54 per cent of the West Bank allotted to the Palestinians is further transected by Israelis-only roads and ‘security areas’. So, where could a Palestinian state be established in this geography?
The purpose of the ‘peace process’ has been to implement the two-state solution. Given the current reality, that is a pipe dream. As the outgoing UN coordinator for the Middle East peace process said in May, “A Palestinian state requires both a territory and a government, and the basis for both is being systematically undermined.” And so, he concluded, it would be impossible to divide the land into two states.
The Palestinian movement is riven by factional fighting. The division between Gaza under a Hamas government and the West Bank under Fatah is a reality. Israel and the Quartet powers have tried hard since the Hamas election in 2006 to destroy the Islamist movement by starving the Palestinian population and shutting them away in a large prison.
This has created unimaginable hardship and suffering, but it has not removed Hamas control of Gaza.
So, ignoring this reality and inviting Abbas to Washington as if none of it existed is foolish and pointless.
He himself is unwilling to attend the conference without a prior commitment from Israel on key issues. Olmert, hamstrung by his own shaky coalition, is unable to do other than stall -- two weak men unfitted to their task. Even some Israeli commentators are warning against holding a conference in such circumstances.
Until the western powers recognize that the key to Middle Eastern peace is to deal with Israel’s policies and behavior and not to hold make-believe conferences based on fantasy, there will be no peace in the region or the world.
Dr. Ghada Karmi is a leading Palestinian political activist and a research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, England.