2008 was expected to be a year of fruitfulness for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, a year marking the history with a comprehensive peace deal on the long-standing conflict as their leaders pledged.
Yet with money envelopes, prime ministerial resignation and inter-party's bargaining exhausting its leadership, Israel has largely been subjected to a political storm during the second half of the year, which derailed the Jewish state off the heavily-expected peace track.
A DYNAMIC START
The two Middle East neighbors strode into the year under the impetus of a historic international conference held on Nov. 27, 2007 in the U.S. city of Annapolis, where Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian National Authority (PNA) President Mahmoud Abbas resumed their bilateral negotiations that had stalled since the Second Intifada in 2000.
Propelled by their host George W. Bush, the first incumbent U.S. president to call for the Palestinians to establish their own independent state, Olmert and Abbas also sanguinely pledged to hammer out a comprehensive peace agreement before Bush leaves office in January 2009.
With such a spectacular vision in mind, the two parties soon began blazing their trails through decades-old thorns, with Olmert and Abbas meeting regularly on one rail and Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams, respectively headed by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, on the other.
Despite a brief break off in the wake of a massive Israeli military operation in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in March, the revived peace process became increasingly vigorous, and releases of Palestinian prisoners, demolitions of West Bank traffic barriers and other confidence-building moves were carried out on the ground.
Adding to the momentum were efforts made by the United States, with Bush stamping his first footprint on the tumultuous land in January and paying a revisit in May. His top diplomat, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, frequented the hot spot for separate and three-way meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders and negotiators, giving pushes for the uphill climb toward the Annapolis peak.
A KILLING STORM
Although little tangible progress was achieved on any of the core issues, including settlements, refugees and the final status of Jerusalem, and Israel's continuous construction in Jewish settlements triggered pungent criticism and deep concerns from the Palestinians and the international community, Israeli, Palestinian and American leaders remained upbeat in the middle of the year.
The peace process snailed its way forward even after a new police probe against Olmert, who had been embroiled in several investigations since taking office in 2006, went public in early May, in which he allegedly took a large sum of illicit money, much of it stuffed in envelopes, from a New York businessman.
Yet as the scandal, together with another one revealed later, unfolded around the prime minister and chairman of the ruling Kadima party, a sweeping political storm gradually came into being, with cries mounting for his resignation and momentum plunging on the peace front.
In September, Livni defeated her main rival, Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, in the Kadima primary election, which Olmert reluctantly agreed to hold, and succeeded him as chief of the centrist party. Shortly later, Olmert formally resigned from the premiership and became a caretaker leader, and Livni embarked upona presidential mandate to form a new cabinet.
Livni's victory was widely seen as good news for the Middle East peace process, as the foreign minister had been leading Israeli teams in talks with the Palestinians and had exhibited a pragmatic stance, representing a better choice than Mofaz.
However, the former Mossad intelligence agent, who was once expected to have good chances of succeeding in the cabinet-making task, failed to cobble together a ruling coalition within 42 days, which threw her country into another several transitional months till the formation of a new government following the Feb. 10 general election.
Overshadowed by Israel's lingering political turmoil, in which the caretaker prime minister's pledge to prod the peace process as long as he remains in office went unheard as the whole political realm was humming and buzzing for the election, the once vivid Annapolis picture was rapidly blurring.
A DECENT FAREWELL
Even as expectations were plummeting for the ambitious goal to be realized, and Palestinian officials were becoming apparently pessimistic, Israeli and U.S. leaders still hung on the Annapolis prospect, which would become a legacy of both scandal-enveloped Olmert and warfare-wrapped Bush.
However, with their days in office waning rapidly and the peace talks still lacking refreshments, it has become certain that the Annapolis process will not bear the expected fruit on the watches of the two lame ducks. When Rice visited the Middle East in early November for the eighth time this year, she acknowledged for the first time that an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal is not likely before Bush hands the keys to the White House to President-elect Barack Obama.
Echoing Palestinian officials, the Bush administration blames the failure on Israel's turbulent political situation, although many analysts cautioned from the start that Bush, whose two terms have largely focused on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, launched his bid too late on the Israeli-Palestinian front. In their defense, Israeli officials have insisted that the ongoing rift between Fatah and Hamas on the Palestinian side is also to blame for the stagnation.
Yet in similar tones, all the three parties said the Annapolis process has laid the groundwork for future efforts. During his trip to Washington days before the anniversary of the landmark summit, Olmert met with Bush for what is likely to be their final gathering as national leaders, showering him with praise for his support for the peace process and reaffirming his belief in the two-state solution, a vision that Bush said is still alive.
Shortly after his return to Israel, the outgoing prime minister, who generated an uproar recently when he said Israel will have to withdraw from almost all the West Bank and parts of east Jerusalem to make peace with the Palestinians, stressed that the sides are very close on the central issues and that it is time to make decisions.
Yet probably the decisions on the Israeli side will be made by the next prime minister, who recent polls showed would be either Livni or former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, head of the current main opposition party Likud. A Netanyahu administration would make the peace prospect even murkier, as he has been opposing almost all the concessions Olmert and Livni have made and his proposal to scale down the political peace talks to discussions on Palestinian economic development is strongly rejected by the Palestinians.
Against the backdrop of an Israel hobbling in such an uncertainty, a United States striving to rescue itself from the devastating financial crisis, and a Palestinian leadership scrambling to quench a backyard fire and extend Abbas' term, the post-Annapolis prospect is anything but clear.
What might be spirit-lifting is that Obama, successor to the Annapolis conference host, who visited Israel and Palestinian territories during his campaign earlier this year, has pledged to act earlier and more enthusiastically to help the two neighbors accomplish the unfinished mission.
Source:Xinhua
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