Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas [Abu Mazen] and his chief negotiator Ahmed Qureia (also know as Abu Ala). (Israeli Government Press Office).
From the State Department Daily Press Briefing yesterday, on Day 321 of the Annapolis Peace Process ™:
QUESTION: Just with a couple months left in office, is there kind of – the framework of some sort of agreement that Secretary Rice has talked about, has something like that started to formulate that you could put in place before the end of the Administration?
MR. MCCORMACK: Well [blah, blah, blah] . . . although Foreign Minister Livni did make a point of having a meeting with her counterpart, which was very positive and sent a good message to the Palestinians. . . .
QUESTION: So there’s nothing really formulated at this point right now? I mean, there’s nothing –
MR. MCCORMACK: Well, the –
QUESTION: – nothing there?
MR. MCCORMACK: Well, the Israelis and Palestinians have both made quite a bit of progress on a lot of the issues. Now, they’ve kept that progress quiet in terms of the details, which, as you’ve heard from us, is a positive thing. Trying to negotiate something like this in public is not a tactic that is going to work. . . .
From Dennis Ross’s conclusions regarding the Oslo Peace Process (pp. 766-771 of “The Missing Peace”):
[Oslo] represented less a transformation than a transaction. Yes [Arafat] would begin to meet with Israelis. Yes, there was recognition . . . But no, there was almost no conditioning of his public for peace. On the contrary, Arafat was telling his public they would get everything and give up nothing. . . .
While [Oslo] did not create connections between publics, it did create strong bonds between the negotiators . . .
Whenever my exasperation with Arafat was reaching its limits, Abu Mazen, Abu Ala [etc.] would remind me that only Arafat had the moral authority among Palestinians to compromise Jerusalem, refugees, and borders . . . Often Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] or Abu Ala [Ahmed Qureia] or other Palestinian negotiators would tell me, “You prefer dealing with us because you see us as more moderate, but we cannot deliver, only he can.” . . .
Every negotiating process has within it the seeds of its own justification. Often the process becomes self-sustaining and essentially an end in itself. That happened with Oslo . . .