Annapolis Conference: Gloomy as it Seems!

The threat against Israeli has became internal no more, yet its survival will depend on the acceptance and relations with its neighbors. Time, circumstances, and other factors have helped shaping the current internal Palestinian division, where the most heard party is the one which denounced resistance and is willing to give in several used-to-be constants in the Palestinian cause. Marginalizing Hamas, including Syria in the talks, and making Saudi Arabia join in with senior representation — for the first time in the presence of Israel — the Annapolis conference will mostly result into one of two options.

First, the desired US "peace" which is full Israeli peace and normalization with its neighboring Arab countries — leaving Hamas and Hizbullah as the only "extremist" resistance. In such case, international support and Israeli strict security measures — as that currently imposed on Hamas and the 1.6 million Palestinians in Gaza — will act jointly to fight "terror". Consequently, virtual peace will be achieved, sure on the state levels and not "people's peace," and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will be summarized by the declaration of an Abbas led Palestinian state in West Bank and Gaza with no rigid promises on the main points of Jerusalem, 1967 borders, or the refugees right of return.

Gloomy as it seems, the Palestinian resistance will be washed away and the Arab street support for the Palestinian rights will be repressed as it has always been. The only hope would then resides in a major change in the ruling regimes in the countries of the Middle East with other regimes democratically elected that would hopefully revive the call for a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and Jerusalem as its capital, as well as a solution for the Palestinian forced in refugee camps and diasporas.

The second expected output will be "devastating consequences," as the former National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, describes it.