Most coverage of the Annapolis Conference conceded that Israeli-Palestinian peace was hardly a likely outcome. Indeed, there were many reasons to be skeptical: the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships are too weak; Hamas is too strong; Israeli and Palestinian publics are too pessimistic; and the “Arab street” is too apathetic, if not downright opposed, to accepting peace with the Jewish state. Given these realities, commentators floated a number of theories as to what Annapolis could realistically accomplish. Perhaps the most compelling of these theories argued that Annapolis sought to establish a broad U.S.-Arab-Israeli coalition against Iranian ascendancy. This theory convincingly explained why even Saudi Arabia—whose leaders proudly refused to shake hands with their Israeli counterparts—participated.
Yet, only two weeks after Annapolis, the it’s-all-about-Iran theory can be laid to rest. Rather than using Annapolis and the ensuing diplomatic process to isolate Iran and its regional proxies, Arab participants have reached out to Iranian-backed Hamas, pushing for a truce with Fatah that would readmit Hamas to the Palestinian political process. This weekend, Saudi Arabia took the first step towards reconciling Hamas and Fatah when it welcomed Damascus-based Hamas leader Khalid Meshal for talks, while Iranian television has announced that Hamas officials will visit Egypt later this week—a move aimed at pressuring Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to negotiate.
Make no mistake: if Arab states successfully force Abbas to negotiate with Hamas, peace prospects will be conclusively doomed. Of course, Hamas and Fatah have been down this road before: after months of infighting, Abbas convened with Meshal and Ismail Haniyeh in Mecca in February 2007, forging a national unity government under Saudi patronage. The ensuing period of relative calm allowed Hamas to prepare for its takeover of Gaza, which formally terminated the national unity government after a mere four months and improved Iran’s ability to provide financial and military support to its radical Islamist allies.
For now, the good news is that Abbas has blocked the resumption of dialogue with Hamas. Yet time is not on Fatah’s side: it enjoys little public support among Palestinians, while Hamas has overmatched it militarily. Negotiating with Hamas will only exacerbate these problems, allowing Hamas to reap the rewards of relative calm with more Iranian funding and increased political legitimacy.
If the Bush administration is serious about pursuing Israeli-Palestinian peace as a strategy against Iran, it will immediately put an end to Egyptian and Saudi attempts to reengage Hamas. It could start by calling Egypt on its hypocritical policy of boosting Hamas even while it imprisons members of its own Muslim Brotherhood. It could also remind the Saudis that legitimizing Iran’s proxies is a dangerous strategy for a country just across the Persian Gulf and bordering Iraq. Whatever it does, the U.S. can hardly afford for the coalition it assembled in Annapolis to fall so quickly.
