What Palestinians want at Annapolis

By Martin Patience
BBC News, Ramallah

Mr Abbas is keen to talk, but not about his Hamas rivals

The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, his negotiating team and other senior Palestinian officials are expressing increasing frustration ahead of the US-sponsored Mid-East conference to be held in Annapolis.

When the conference was first announced by US President George Bush in July, many Palestinian officials hoped it would be the starting point of a process that would quickly lead to the establishment of Palestinian state.

Israeli officials had insisted for several years that there was no partner for peace on the Palestinian side.

But Mr Abbas's stock significantly rose in Israel and in the West following the Hamas takeover in Gaza in June.

Israel, the US, and Europe quickly moved to support Mr Abbas, who heads the mainstream nationalist Fatah faction after he severed ties with Hamas, the militant Islamist movement.

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The economic embargo was lifted in the West Bank, which Fatah controls, and the Middle East conference was proposed partly to bolster Mr Abbas's standing amongst his own people.

The implicit message from the West to the Palestinians was stick with Mr Abbas and your lives will get better.

But the prospects of a major breakthrough at the conference have been dampened by both Israel and the United States.

Mr Abbas's position is that he wants a Palestinian state established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with their pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as the capital.

Low Expectations

From the conference, the Palestinians were hoping for a joint declaration with the Israelis on this principle.

They were also hoping for a clear timetable of how and when this state would come into being, which would be overseen by a third party - possibly the US or the European Union.

West Bank Palestinians on their hopes for the talks at Annapolis In pictures

On these two issues, the Palestinian negotiators say that they are not close to any agreement with their counterparts.

They say that both sides know the broad outline of a future Palestinian state and that Israeli officials need to stop dragging their heels and start implementing the process.

The Palestinians also wanted Israel to freeze all settlement construction and remove all illegal outposts in the West Bank ahead of the conference.

This was a requirement of the peace initiative known as the roadmap which the Palestinians say Israel failed to honour. Mr Olmert said Israel would not build new settlements and would start removing outposts. It will also release 450 prisoners.

But while these issues are crucially important to the Palestinians they give no real indication of what form a Palestinian state will take.

In spite of lowered expectations, the Palestinians are expected to attend the conference.

"We have no choice," said one senior Palestinian official, "we need to keep knocking on doors."

Possible violence

But there's a feeling among Palestinian officials that the longer it takes to form a Palestinian state, the more concessions Israel will wring out of them supported by the US.

They point to the doubling of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to more than 450,000 since the mid-1990s.

There is also one major issue that Mr Abbas and other Fatah officials are not so keen to talk about - and that is Hamas.

The Islamic movement's leaders are opposed to conference - and they haven't been invited anyway - saying that it will do little to further Palestinian national aims.

Palestinian officials from the Fatah camp are also talking bleakly about the future if this conference does not at least launch some sort of meaningful process towards the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Some political analysts believe that if Mr Abbas returns from Annapolis empty-handed it will only serve to boost Hamas - something that Israel and the West say that they do not want to happen.

If the experience of 2000 is anything to go by, a failure at talks can give momentum to those, on both sides, that want to pursue violence to achieve their aims.

The collapse of peace talks sponsored by US President Bill Clinton were followed by the launch of the second Palestinian uprising and an Israeli re-invasion of large areas of the West Bank controlled by the Palestinian Authority.