Ammon News - By Hasan Abu Nimah

Last Friday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton invited Israel and the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas to Washington on September 2 to begin face-to-face talks without preconditions, with the goal of achieving a peace settlement within one year to establish a Palestinian state.

Apparently, the plan was already accepted by the parties before the announcement was made by Clinton, with bewildered US envoy George Mitchell at her side.

Action (or more accurately inaction) was also coordinated with the Quartet (the group comprising Russia, the European Union, the United States and the United Nations). The Quartet was supposed to issue a fresh statement in support of direct talks by mid-August, reaffirming the content of its March 19 statement calling on Israel to stop settlement building, end its occupation, which started in 1967, refrain from demolitions and evictions in East Jerusalem and allow the emergence of a Palestinian state within 24 months from the starting date of the negotiations.

Abbas had demanded the Quartet statement as an alternative to Israeli and American guarantees, which he was unable to wrest from them.

Israel, which insists that there will be no "preconditions" - i.e., no restraint on its criminal behaviour and colonisation - rejected in advance any Quartet statement, which it said, would allow Palestinians to obtain their preconditions via another route.

Everything had to be staged precisely the way Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted: an American invitation to the talks, not only with no mention of the terms on which the negotiations could be conducted, but with specific affirmation that there will be no preconditions and no agenda. The Quartet statement, meant to appease the Palestinians, was only allowed to make reference to many previous statements and to blur the issues, but it excluded any mention of the principles Abbas was insisting upon. The Quartet statement had to follow the American invitation, not precede it, as initially envisaged.

The parties will head for Washington at the set date and there will be a ceremony, attended by US President Barack Obama, as well as by two key leaders from the region, King Abdullah and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. They were invited by Obama to participate in the launch.

The Obama administration will claim an important achievement. It will be a one-day media event but, one hopes, that that will not be all.

Assuming all will be well between now and September 2, and assuming that the planned negotiations will last (if Israel does not rush to announce a new settlement project or fresh demolitions in Jerusalem) there will be little to negotiate.

Netanyahu and his ultra-rightwing government have been very clear about their positions on all so-called final status issues: no right of return for Palestinian refugees, no removal of any settlement, no return to the 1967 borders, no change on the Israeli position of annexing all Jerusalem and its surroundings, no withdrawal from the Jordan Valley, and Israel should be recognised as a state for the Jews.

As a matter of fact, and in less than 36 hours from the Friday announcement, Netanyahu - apparently responding to pressure from his coalition partners - started already spelling out his preconditions. He informed his Cabinet last Sunday that the Palestinians have first to guarantee Israel's security and to recognise Israel as a "state for the Jewish people" - not just a "Jewish state".

Clearly, those two initial preconditions, by no means all that Netanyahu has in store, are impossible for the Palestinians to meet.

In its August 23 editorial, the Israeli daily Haaretz wondered "whether Netanyahu's manoeuvre [referring to his promise of a Palestinian state] was an empty one".

The editorial said that "[B]y expressing doubt at yesterday's Cabinet meeting about whether there was a genuine partner on the Palestinian side, Netanyahu showed that he is preparing an escape route from being blamed for the failure of the talks before they have even begun".

But even if the talks do begin without such obstacles, what will they be able to achieve?

If 18 months of intensive efforts by the Obama administration and the so-called "international community" have failed to convince Netanyahu to agree verbally to even discuss these matters, how could anyone expect any results from the negotiations?

The indisputable fact is that Israel has the initiative firmly in its hands. Netanyahu has been getting his way and dictating events more under the Obama administration than has been the case with any other Israeli leader and US president.

In the absence of any US pressure on Israel, no other party, including the United Nations, can have any influence. The Arab states long ago lost any initiative, preferring instead to be part of the complacent "international community".

The results of the Washington talks will be no more productive than the talks launched at the 2007 Annapolis summit, in the last year of the Bush administration. The promise there was also that an agreement would be achieved within a year and despite inviting dozens of countries to attend the opening ceremony, the whole effort came to nothing - as was predicted accurately. The result this time will, most depressingly, also be zero. I sincerely hope that this prediction is totally wrong.

There may be an attempt to sell a very dubious deal to a desperate and besieged Palestinian delegation, as was done at the Camp David summit in 2000, but that will not work either. No sane Palestinian could have accepted the ghetto-state that was vaguely and verbally offered at Camp David, and what would be on offer now will be even less than that. Even if a Palestinian leader accepted it, it could never work or be implemented.

Yet, and despite failure, which looks certain, this sham is necessary for all the parties involved. Washington, which raised expectations of serious efforts to solve the conflict, cannot admit its utter inability before domestic and international opinion. So whenever real success is impossible, the US resorts to gimmicks and ceremonies to present as fake milestones and accomplishments. With the Annapolis memory still vivid, what is being planned for Washington in a week's time sounds strikingly familiar.

Netanyahu is in an ideal situation. He gets to play the role of willing peacemaker while facing no US pressure and carrying on with the slow ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, the colonisation of the West Bank and the criminal blockade of Gaza.

As for Abbas, he long ago surrendered any powers he ever had to both the Israelis and the Americans. They hold the keys of his financial and political survival. He cannot disobey without risking his existence. He may know how fast his standing is sinking and how much damage he may be causing his people. Still he cannot stop while accelerating downhill, until he lands at the bottom, humiliated and destroyed.

Abbas is no more than a hostage of years of old, failed and dangerous policies. He should not be allowed to represent the just Palestinian cause; he has disqualified himself politically and legally.

The Palestinians deserve much better and true friends in the "international community" would not go along with this theatrical charade.

The standard argument of those who defend the "unconditional" participation in the negotiations is that Palestinian absence would only offer the Israelis a free hand to continue building and colonising. And Palestinians would once again be accused of "missing an opportunity". But this is nonsense. Even defeated parties entering surrender negotiations can count on having specific terms of reference. Netanyahu and the Americans have not even allowed Abbas to enter the talks with so much as a piece of paper with an agenda printed on it. He can expect no better once he sits down at the table.

* The Jordan Times