U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the Middle East last week    in yet another attempt to flesh out President George W. Bush’s latest peace initiative, which is based on a two-state solution.

 At last November’s summit in Annapolis, Md., Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas promised “to engage in vigorous, ongoing and continuous negotiations” to sign a peace treaty by the end of 2008.

In a tangible demonstration of his commitment, Bush paid a brief visit to Israel – his first since becoming president – three months ago and expressed optimism that a treaty can be signed before he leaves office in January 2009. Bush plans to return to Jerusalem next month, when Israel marks its 60th anniversary of statehood, to push the process further  along. Progress, however, has been glacial, and serious observers do not realistically expect a real breakthrough, even though Israel and the PA profess to be interested in breaking the impasse.

Cognizant of the difficulties that lie ahead, both sides have dampened expectations.

“I am not sure we will make it, but we are determined to [take] a giant step forward to end this dispute once and for all,” Olmert said recently. Israel’s deputy prime minister, Haim Ramon, has been even more candid, saying that “no one expects” a full-fledged agreement this year, and that only a “declaration of principles” is possible. Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, has asserted that a comprehensive accord, based on the internationally sponsored 2003 “road map” peace plan, is unlikely to be achieved.

Under the road map, which is sponsored by the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United States, Israel and the Palestinians are bound by reciprocal obligations. Israel is supposed to withdraw from areas in the West Bank occupied since the eruption of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000 and take steps to normalize Palestinian life there by such measures as the removal of roadblocks and checkpoints, which impede movement and thus harm the Palestinian economy. Israel is also supposed to freeze all settlement activity, including natural growth, in the West Bank.

The Palestinians, for their part, are supposed to stop incitement, renounce violence and terrorism and arrest, disrupt and restrain individuals and groups planning terrorist acts.

According to the United States, whose role is to monitor implementation, neither side has met its obligations,

Terrorism continues apace, but on a much lower level than at the height of the intifadah six years ago. This past December, three Palestinian groups – Hamas, Islamic Johad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade – took credit for the murder of two Israeli settlers near Hebron. In February, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Dimona in which a Russian immigrant was killed. Last month, in western Jerusalem, a Palestinian man apparently unaffiliated with any armed organization opened fire on rabbinical students at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, killing eight young men. In February and March, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip – unilaterally relinquished by Israel in the summer of 2005 and seized by Hamas from Fatah about a year later – fired hundreds of Qassam rockets at Israeli border kibbutzim and the town of Sderot and almost two dozen longer-range and more sophisticated Katyushas at the city of Ashkelon, causing few casualties but extensive property damage.

These attacks occurred as the Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki found that, while a  considerable majority of Palestinians supported the murder of the seminary students and the rocket attacks, two-thirds of the respondents said they were in favour of a two-state solution and normalized relations with Israel.

Responding to these daily missile barrages, Israel launched a series of incursions, backed by air power, into Gaza, killing 120 Palestinians, some of whom were civilians caught in the crossfire. After denouncing Israel’s “unjust war and open-ended massacres,” the PA suspended peace talks with Israel for one week. Abbas, who had earlier threatened  to “pursue armed conflict,” said he would resume talks with Israel only after it reached a truce with Hamas. Under U.S. pressure, the Palestinians returned to the negotiations, explaining that the peace process is “a strategic choice” for them.  

Before resuming talks, Abbas said that if a peace agreement is not signed this year, it will never materialize. Clearly, he was engaging in hyperbole. Yet no one doubts that he was expressing deep-seated frustrations with Israel’s policies. In recent months, the mainstream Palestinian leadership, the most moderate in decades, has accused Israel of undermining the road map by erecting new roadblocks, expanding existing settlements, building  new neighbourhoods in contested areas, tolerating unauthorized outposts and launching fresh raids in the West Bank.

The Israeli government has approved the construction of hundreds of new homes in such locales as Givat Zeev, a settlement north of Jerusalem, and Pisgat Zeev, a neighbourhood in eastern Jerusalem annexed in 1967. Israel justifies its unilateralism on the basis of its intention to retain settlement blocs near its capital. Last week, Olmert reiterated that Israel will not stop building in and around Jerusalem, declaring that “these places will remain in Israel’s hands.”

Although Olmert vowed at Annapolis that unauthorized construction in the territories would be banned, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that the expansion of West Bank settlements is “unhelpful,” a survey conducted by Peace Now indicates that there have been 101 cases of settlement construction since this past December.

By the terms of the road map, Israel also  is obligated to evacuate unauthorized outposts in the West Bank established since March 2001. Two years ago, settlers were removed from one such outpost, Amona, but they have since returned. Defence Minister Ehud Barak, who is reluctant to dismantle the outposts by force and has described the Amona operation as “rash,” wants to resolve the issue through discussions with the settlers. But no viable solution has surfaced. Since roughly three-quarters of the outposts are supposedly on private Palestinian land, the issue cannot be postponed for much longer. “We don’t want a confrontation,” Ramon said recently, “but if there is no choice, the government will fulfil its obligations.”

As well, the Palestinians are pressing Israel to honour its promise to reopen Palestinian institutions – such as Orient House and the Arab Chamber of Commerce – in eastern Jerusalem and to call a halt to military operations in the West Bank. The Palestinians, too, are demanding the dismantlement of 580 checkpoints and roadblocks. Last week, in deference to Rice, Israel announced that 50 earthen roadblocks will be removed and that  the PA can deploy police officers in Jenin. PA police are already in Nablus.

In an encouraging sign, Israel and the PA renewed talks on March 18 on final status issues ranging from final borders to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but Jerusalem was not on the agenda because Olmert wants to leave it for last.

In general, Israel’s policy is to continue pressing ahead with diplomacy while striking Hamas when necessary. But Israel has warned the PA that if reconciliation talks with Hamas should succeed, the peace process would grind to a halt. On the other hand, can Israel and the PA really reach peace without Hamas? Probably not.