The fuel stoppage – which represents about 70% of Gaza’s oil supplies – came after Gaza had caused “a humanitarian crisis” in Israel by permitting the indiscriminate firing of 230 rockets and mortars into Israeli civilian population centers during the previous four days.

Such a heavy and incessant barrage – following years of similar action that has seen thousands of such rockets and mortars fired at and landing in Israel – was the final straw as Israel began what will inevitably become the total severing all contact with Gaza – already declared to be a hostile entity by Israel.

Fair warning of such action had been served over the past six months but was ignored by a mindless leadership and terrorist sub-culture that dominates everything that has been occurring in Gaza – not only in regard to Israel but also as concerns the Arab population of Gaza.

This has divided Gaza into two bitterly opposing camps with each trying to inflict the maximum damage on the other in a deathly power struggle that unfortunately cannot be as easily resolved as cutting off the fuel supplies.

Gaza is one big mess. Supposedly now ruled by the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas – it displays anything but “strength and bravery” – its English translation.

When Israel totally withdrew its army and evacuated all 8000 Israeli civilians living in Gaza in August 2005, hopes were high that Gaza would take responsible and reasoned steps in showing the world that its solely Arab population was capable and ready to assume the responsibilities of statehood and to live in peace with a Jewish Israel.

Events since then have seen Gaza slide into an abyss of hopelessness from which there seems no way out.

The opportunity afforded by Israel’s evacuation has now been thrown to the wind – blown away along with the countless opportunities that have arisen in the last 60 years that could have seen Gaza develop and emerge as part of a new Arab State between 1948-1967 by a simple declaration of statehood.

The Hamas Covenant adopted on 18 August 1988 tells why it cannot happen now or in the future if the present chaotic situation persists.

The preamble to the Covenant explicitly states:

“Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious…The Movement [Hamas] is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realised.”

One such squadron – the 22 member Arab League – is indeed offering its support but in doing so is contributing to the continued destabilisation occurring in the region.

Instead of immediately sending fuel and food supplies by the truckload through Egypt to Gaza to relieve the crisis it claims was being suffered by its Arab brethren, the Arab League was apparently happy for that crisis to continue to worsen as it chose to play the political game – running off to the United Nations calling for it “to hold international investigations into the Israeli crimes.”

Resolutions or pious self serving declarations cannot end a humanitarian crisis. They will not turn on the lights or put food in the belly.

The Arab League should be counselling Hamas to show “strength and bravery” by abandoning its insane policy of trying to get rid of the Jews. This is a policy still shared with its rival seeking control in Gaza – the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

It is this policy which has and will continue to sow the seeds of suffering and despair for the ordinary Arab on the street who is powerless to do anything to end this mindless hatred of Jews.

That ordinary Arab must now be ruing the day he voted Hamas to power – even though the corrupt PLO alternative was little different in its attitude to Israel. He has helped create the political environment that now threatens his daily existence. He is not just an “innocent citizen” and totally without blame – as claimed by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The Arab League needs to wash its hands of Hamas and to show its complete repudiation of what Hamas supports and stands for. In failing to do so it has become an accessory to endorsing the Hamas Covenant and has aligned itself with a movement that declares in Article 13 of the Covenant:

“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavours.”

Supporting this policy makes a mockery of Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa’s current call on the countries that took part in the Annapolis conference to shoulder their responsibilities for Gaza and that the United States should be directly responsible for what was happening in Gaza.

The Arab League cannot have it both ways. It needs to choose between peaceful resolution or Jihad.

Intractability, duplicity and double dealing has marked the Arab League’s policies since its futile invasion of Palestine in 1948.

In dealing with Gaza it is displaying the same ineptitude that has marked its attitude and approach towards Israel at every critical stage over the last 60 years – when real opportunities for a negotiated settlement presented themselves only to be rejected each time by the Arab League imposing conditions that it knew could never be accepted by Israel.

The current support given to Hamas must end if there is ever to be any chance of Gaza emerging from the quicksand that is rapidly threatening to swallow it up.

One solution is to return Gaza to Egyptian control – a situation that existed between 1948-1967 – to end the rocket and mortar barrage and restore order and stability. Arab League support for such action could make it happen. Given its past performance the Arab League will do nothing -as usual.

Unless the Jew-hatred endemic in Gaza’s Government and its population is ended, Gaza is in for a tough time – and the Arab League will have to share the major responsibility for allowing a deteriorating situation to become far worse.

This delaying tactic has failed in the past and failed again this time. Jews have every right to settle in the West Bank in international law and Israel has made it clear it will not agree to totally waive that right as a pre-condition to the conduct of negotiations.

Regrettably the Arabs have never stopped making such unrealistic and politically unattainable territorial demands for the last 90 years. Had they accepted proposals made by the international community 60-70 years ago, they would have had a flourishing and thriving State today in an area of former Palestine far greater than size they are now demanding.

Many similar opportunities have presented themselves since then but have been allowed to pass – by rejection or default. Some occurred before – and some after – the founding of the PLO in 1964. One was created in 2003 with the formulation of the Roadmap proposed by America, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union – the Quartet – but remains unimplemented in the smallest detail.

The PLO has actually gone backwards in political influence since the Roadmap was unveiled. It has lost political control in Gaza. It lacks the authority to enforce security and root out terrorism in the West Bank and Gaza – essential conditions for the Roadmap to have any chance of success. It is now but one of many political groups vying for power amongst the Palestinian Arabs.

Yet – ironically – it continues to receive substantial international financial assistance and diplomatic support despite continuing to make the following longstanding and non negotiable territorial – and in some cases abhorrently racist – demands that it knows can never be achieved in any negotiations:

1. That Jews be denied the right to settle in any part of the West Bank – part of the ancient biblical and internationally sanctioned Jewish homeland approved by the League of Nations and the United Nations

2. That all 450000 Jews currently living in the West Bank be uprooted from their homes and businesses located there.

3. That the West Bank become a Jew free zone.

4. That the Palestinian Arabs be granted sovereignty and statehood in all of the West Bank

5. That millions of Palestinian Arabs or their descendants be given the unconditional right to go and live in Israel.

These conditions are completely unacceptable to Israel. President Bush has made it clear he supports Israel’s position. The PLO knows this – yet it still pursues – and persists with – these impossible demands.

Two principal reasons underscore why these demands continue to be made:

1. They ensure that no resolution of the conflict will be possible thereby keeping alive the 43 year old PLO dream of driving all the Jews out of Palestine as the only solution.

This paranoia has been the stumbling block that has prevented the Arabs accepting any proposals over the past 70 years for the territorial division of Palestine between Jews and Arabs. The PLO agreed to amend its Charter in 1993 to reflect it had abandoned that position – yet has failed to do so to this day.

The PLO shares common ground in pursuing this goal with Islamic Jihad whose spokesman – Abu Hamza – stated in the Washington Post on 27 December:

“We will continue to bring terror and destruction and death among the Zionists until we uproot them from our land”

Hamas – the PLO’s main political rival – has declared that any negotiations “are valueless and weightless and would not serve the national cause of our people and would undermine its higher interests.” KUNA – 27 December.

For Hamas that national cause is also the destruction of Israel.

So the tactic continues for the PLO to conduct Mickey Mouse negotiations whilst chipping away at the edges to secure some territorial or other advantage either before or during those negotiations such as freezing any building or settlement activity by Israel, trying to stop completion of the security barrier and procuring prisoner releases.

2. Continuing negotiations postpone the Arab League accepting the primary responsibility for ending the refugee status of the Palestinian Arabs living outside the boundaries of former Palestine – a status directly created by the invasion of Palestine by the armies of six Arab League members in 1948 and disgracefully and inhumanely perpetuated by the Arab League ever since.

The power inherent in the PLO being a negotiating partner is no doubt exhilarating. Travelling the world capitals and being received by Heads of State makes for the good life for those lucky enough to be part of it. But any chance of gaining statehood is an impossibility whilst these unrealistic demands continue to be made.

The PLO shows no signs of making any concessions and so is destined to continue to walk the path of statelessness – whilst the territory available for any such state is further diminished by new facts created on the ground that makes the likelihood of such a state in the future a territorial impossibility.

This position has arisen because the PLO has in reality never lost the plot – to create an Arab state in the whole of former Palestine over the ashes of Israel.

The post-Annapolis negotiations will ultimately be dubbed as “the negotiations to nowhere” resulting in the demise of the PLO as Israel’s negotiating partner. Once again the PLO will have missed the boat – probably the last boat it can ever hope to catch before it sinks into political oblivion.

Carter successfully brokered a peace treaty at Camp David in 1978 between Egypt and Israel, which has endured for 29 years surviving many strains that could have permanently ended the relationship during this period.

Clinton walked away empty handed in 2000 at Camp David after two weeks of intense one on one diplomacy with Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat.

Ms Rice certainly needs all the advice and help she can get as she struggles to get her planned international meeting in Annapolis off the ground. Even if she succeeds it could end in so much bitterness and enmity that it could signal the end of President Bush’s vision to create a new democratic Arab State between Israel and Jordan.

Why then did Carter succeed and Clinton fail and what lessons are there to be learnt by Ms Rice?

Three critical differences marked the negotiations that were undertaken by each President:

1. Two sovereign States – Israel and Egypt – were the parties in the Carter negotiations.

One sovereign State – Israel – and one non sovereign entity – the Palestinian Authority – were the parties in the Clinton negotiations.

2. Egyptian sovereign territory – the Sinai – was the territorial issue at the Carter negotiations.

Territory belonging to no sovereign State – the West Bank and Gaza – was the territorial issue at the Clinton negotiations.

3. Up to 7000 Jews faced removal from the Sinai to successfully conclude the Carter negotiations, whilst up to 200000 Jews faced removal from the West Bank and Gaza if the Clinton negotiations were to succeed.

Additionally, highly emotive issues concerning refugees and Jerusalem were the sting in the tail for Clinton’s negotiations once the territorial issue had been resolved.

Israel had no historic territorial claims on Sinai. Israel returned every square metre of the Sinai and removed all 7000 Jews living there to secure peace with Egypt.

In the process Israel also handed over the Alma Oil Field it had discovered valued at over $100 billion – which would have secured energy independence for Israel if it had been retained – as well as military bases and airfields.

100% of Egyptian sovereign territory captured by Israel in the Six Day War was thus returned to Egypt by Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin – for solemn promises of peace contained on a piece of paper.

Arafat similarly demanded the return of every square metre of the West Bank and Gaza in the Clinton negotiations which would have necessitated all 200000 Jews living there being uprooted. If it had worked for Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat – Arafat probably reasoned -why would it not work for him?

There was one great difference.

The land Arafat sought exclusively for himself was “no man’s land “- territory in which sovereignty remained unallocated between Jews and Arabs and whose last sovereign ruler was Great Britain under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine from 1920-1948.

Following Britain’s withdrawal in May 1948, Jordan had seized and occupied the West Bank – dispossessing those Jews then living there – until losing it to Israel in the Six Day War in 1967.

Jews – who had been entitled to settle in the West Bank from 1922 under Article 6 of the Mandate as later confirmed by article 80 of the United Nations Charter – started returning to live there after 1967.

Arafat was offered 90% of the West Bank and all of Gaza, refused to take it and ended up with nothing. 450000 Jews currently living in the West Bank complicate any such offer being renewed again.

Condolezza Rice has hopefully learnt the following four lessons from these two Presidential negotiations :

1. Israel has valid territorial claims in the West Bank – the biblical heartland of the Jewish people - created by the League of Nations and the United Nations, that will not be ceded in their entirety.

2. Removing 450000 Jews to satisfy the territorial demands of a non-sovereign claimant with an inferior claim in international law to Israel is a certain recipe for negotiations to fail.

3. Negotiations between Sovereign States are easier to successfully conclude – especially where territorial disputes are involved that have a linkage to those States historically, geographically and demographically as is the case with Israel, Jordan and the West Bank.

4. Negotiations that have failed are not likely to succeed in the future if the same demands continue to be made without any real change by the party who caused the original negotiations to fail.

Sean McCormack said Ms. Rice:

“is a student of history and has a keen appreciation for how we can apply the lessons of history, what we can learn from those who have gone before us”

Her discussions with Presidents Carter and Clinton should have convinced her that further negotiations on President Bush’s two state vision have the hallmark of Clinton failure stamped all over them.

Ms Rice needs to have the candour to tell the President just that and to formulate a policy which can lead to negotiations between Israel and Jordan on the future of the West Bank which can have successful outcomes like those achieved between Israel and Egypt in the Carter negotiations.

President Bush can still leave the Oval Office a winner and avoid being buried in the diplomatic graveyard among those who tried – and failed – to resolve any aspect of the Arab-Israel conflict.

To do so he needs to quickly jettison his two state vision which has gone nowhere in five years. His decision – either way – will become history too.

One major reason has been the inability of the PLO to seriously change its mindset and specifically revoke or amend the offending provisions of the PLO Covenant that call for the destruction of Israel and that prevent the creation of this new State as envisioned by Oslo, former President Bill Clinton, President George Bush and his Quartet partners – Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

On 9 September 1993, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat had made that written commitment to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin as the quid pro quo for the Oslo negotiating process to commence between Israel and the PLO and for the historic handshake between them on the White House lawns just four days later.

A long and tortuous process by Israel and America then followed to ensure Arafat’s total compliance with that commitment. On 14 December 1998 President Clinton stated:

“I thank you for your rejection—fully, finally and forever—of the passages in the Palestinian Charter calling for the destruction of Israel. For they were the ideological underpinnings of a struggle renounced at Oslo. By revoking them once and for all, you have sent, I say again, a powerful message not to the government, but to the people of Israel. You will touch people on the street there. You will reach their hearts there.”

Yet despite this declaration not one article of the Covenant has been revised or revoked to this very day nor has that message touched the Palestinian Arabs or reached their hearts.

The Chairman of the Palestine National Council charged with making those changes – Salim Za’anoun – stated on 3 February 2001, in the official Palestinian Authority newspaper, that the Covenant remained unchanged and was still in force [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida as translated by MEMRI]

A look at just three of the thirty three Articles in the PLO Covenant shows why it is essential that every Article be reviewed and altered if any meaningful negotiations can possibly be undertaken post Annapolis.

Article 1

“Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people: it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.”

This article ignores any Jewish rights in Palestine. Why not amend it to read as follows:

“ Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people and of the Jewish people,and the Arab Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.”

Article 2:

“Palestine with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit”

This article absolutely prohibits President Bush’s two state solution and could be changed as follows:

“Palestine comprises the land contained within the boundaries that existed during the British Mandate from 1920-1948 and has now ceased to comprise an indivisible territorial unit. For purposes of clarification Palestine includes the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan which comprised part of the British Mandate until 1946.”

Article 15:

“The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine and everything that has been based on them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism being a divine religion is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own: they are citizens of the states to which they belong.”

This article ignores the binding effect of international law and is racist, discriminatory and offensive in the extreme. It needs to be redrawn to perhaps read as follows:

“The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed legal and binding. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are compatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism is both a divine religion and an independent nationality. Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they can like Palestinian Arabs be citizens of the states to which they otherwise belong”

How can successful negotiations be concluded whilst this current unclear and confusing mindset confronts the PLO and Israeli negotiators? How have these provisions been specifically rejected by the PLO ?

The PLO needs to immediately face these demons and excise them unequivocally and indisputably from its thinking if the ongoing negotiations are to have any prospect of success.

This is not a question of semantic pettiness or nit picking. It goes to the very bona fides of Israel’s negotiating partner and the sincerity and seriousness with which it intends to conduct these negotiations.

Perhaps the first indication of this troubling mindset – and the effect it can have on the negotiations – was the following remarkable statement recently made by the PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat :

“One of the more pressing problems is the Zionist regime’s insistence on being recognized as a Jewish state… Israel could call itself whatever it wanted, but the PA would never acknowledge Israel’s Jewish identity.” [ Jerusalem Post, 14 November 2007]

Sweeping this – and similar recent statements by leading Arab spokesmen – under the carpet will only guarantee the failure of future negotiations. They will be difficult and complex enough – without such institutionalised mind blocks to reconciliation and recognition that had supposedly been dead and buried with President Clinton‘s declaration on 14 December 1998.

The PLO needs to liberate itself first before it can hope to liberate any land. Failure to do so over the last 14 years has seen its continuing decline in influence. It is now time to get serious and stop playing games.

His closest confidante – the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – suggested as much when she made this blunt observation after her visit to the Middle East this past week:

“I spent a lot of time on security issues, not on-the-ground today security issues, but how would you envision the security of two states living side by side, because they’re going to have to come up with a security concept between them. It’s one of the problems that we’re dealing with, frankly, in the Israeli population. And I heard it not just from the Israeli officials but from a broad range of Israelis. They had the withdrawal from Lebanon and it brought instability in Lebanon. They had the withdrawal from the Gaza, and look what happened in Gaza.

If, in fact, they’re going to be asked to withdraw from the West Bank at some point, what does that mean for the security of Israel? That’s a fair question. It really is. And so one of the things that I take back is that we are going to need to spend a lot of time thinking about how this state, if we are fortunate enough to be able to bring it into being, how it is going to relate to the security of its neighbor and vice versa.”

This marks the first time that the Secretary of State has so forcefully come to grips with the security guarantees that Israel needs to receive before the President’s two state vision can ever get off the ground.

It would be inconceivable that she would make these momentous comments without first having discussed them with the President.

Ms. Rice would be well aware that when President Bush first spoke of his two state vision on 24 June 2002, he laid down two preconditions necessary for its achievement:

1.The Palestinian people must elect new leaders not compromised by terror

2.These new leaders must build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty.

These conditions remain substantially unfulfilled more than 5 years later – and present indications are they are going to be a long time coming – if ever at all.

It was his recognition of this reality that inspired President Bush to call his planned international meeting in Annapolis next month – which he designed essentially to try and advance the fulfilment of these fundamental preconditions. His concern was well founded.

Both persons currently claiming to lead the Palestinian Arabs – Ismail Haniyeh and Mahmoud Abbas – are compromised by terror.

Haniyeh heads Hamas – a movement that openly calls for the destruction of Israel. Abbas – one of Yasser Arafat’s closest advisors – is now the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation which is no less vehement than Hamas in its desire to wipe Israel off the map. They only differ in the strategy they wish to employ to achieve their common aim.

A practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty are mere mirages on an invisible horizon.

The Arabs have totally rejected President Bush’s agenda insisting that their attendance at Annapolis be conditioned on substantive agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority being reached before the meeting even begins concerning the core issues of Jerusalem, refugees and borders

Significantly Ms Rice has rebuffed the Arabs attempted hijack of the President’s agenda stating:

“So I know we get very focused on, you know, what will be said about borders, what will be said about Jerusalem, what will be said about the refugees. In fact, a lot has been said over a long period of time about those issues and more will have to be said. But I’m also quite convinced that one of the really crucial pieces that has to be filled in are these concepts of how the states will relate to each other in practical terms concerning security and in practical terms concerning economic issues”

Perhaps the penny is slowly dropping and the realisation is dawning that the Arabs are totally disinterested in Israel’s security concerns and in meeting the very conditions laid down by President Bush as essential if his two state vision is going to be achieved.

The abandonment of the President’s vision does not necessarily mean that the conflict in the West Bank need continue unabated until a democratic nirvana is achieved there under a leader not compromised by terror.

The Arabs have already publicly signalled they would be prepared to consider Israel swapping some of its vacant land in return for keeping those parts of the West Bank populated by 450000 Jews.

Satisfying Israel’s security needs in the context of a territorial resolution that does not involve all of the West Bank remaining under Arab control can be achieved very quickly if Israel and Jordan divide the West Bank between them.

Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel already contains the following guarantees concerning Israel’s security that have stood the test of time for the last 12 years and remained rock solid through several crises:

“1. They recognise and will respect each other’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence;

2. They recognise and will respect each other’s right to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries;

3. They will develop good neighbourly relations of co-operation between them to ensure lasting security, will refrain from the threat or use of force against each other and will settle all disputes between them by peaceful means;”

Negotiations between Jordan and Israel within the framework of this existing peace treaty offer the hope of a better life and prosperity for the Arab residents of the West Bank, will free them from Israeli occupation and achieve a measure of peace stability and security in the region not enjoyed for 60 years.

Such negotiations will not resolve the issue of refugees. No plan can ever hope to do so whilst the Arabs insist on millions of refugees and their descendants becoming citizens of Israel.

Stay with the vision or accept the reality? President Bush at last appears to be succumbing to the reality.

The spread of this Jewish-rejectionist disease has now permeated the highest places of political and intellectual thought amongst the Palestinian Arabs.

Such statements sound the death knell for the continuation of the post -Annapolis negotiations unless they are withdrawn and repudiated as soon as possible. The deafening silence that has followed His Beatitude’s comments indicates this is unlikely to occur.

His Beatitude’s outburst could also herald an early release from obligations to pay $7.4 billion to the Palestinian Authority pledged by donor countries at their recent meeting in Paris -even before they have had the opportunity to get out their cheque books to make a down payment.

So far President Bush has remained surprisingly silent on His Beatitude’s comments. Israel too seems tongue tied at what to do about His Beatitude’s sudden rush of blood. His Beatitude has managed to totally undermine what was being sold as a successful outcome of the meetings in Annapolis and Paris – intensive negotiations on core issues between Israel and the PLO over the next twelve months ending in the creation of a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan as envisioned in President Bush‘s Road Map.

Israel needs to invoke and demand that President Bush now honour his written commitment to Israel on 23 May 2003 in the face of this unequivocal Palestinian rejection of Israel’s Jewishness.

When President Bush released his Road Map on 30 April 2003, Israel provided the President with 14 reservations it had before it could accept the plan as a basis for negotiation..

Reservation 6 made by Israel to President Bush stated:

“In connection to both the introductory statements and the final settlement,declared references must be made to Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and to the waiver of any right of return for Palestinian refugees to the State of Israel.”

On 23 May 2003, then Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice made the following statement from the White House:

“The roadmap was presented to the Government of Israel with a request from the President that it respond with contributions to this document to advance true peace. The United States Government received a response from the Government of Israel, explaining its significant concerns about the roadmap.

The United States shares the view of the Government of Israel that these are real concerns, and will address them fully and seriously in the implementation of the roadmap to fulfil the President’s vision of June 24, 2002.”

On 25 May 2003, the Israeli Cabinet met and by a majority resolved:

“Based on the 23 May 2003 statement of the United States Government, in which the United States committed to fully and seriously address Israel’s comments to the Roadmap during the implementation phase, the Prime Minister announced on 23 May 2003 that Israel has agreed to accept the steps set out in the Roadmap.

The Government of Israel affirms the Prime Minister’s announcement, and resolves that all of Israel’s comments, as addressed in the Administration’s statement, will be implemented in full during the implementation phase of the Roadmap.”

Nothing could be clearer or more unambiguous. Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish State is a fundamental condition in any negotiations being undertaken by Israel with the PLO under the Road Map – and President Bush has accepted Israel‘s position on this issue.

President Bush must demand that Mahmoud Abbas affirm in writing that Israel will be recognised as the Jewish State in the post-Annapolis negotiations. This is the only way President Bush can “fully and seriously address” this “real concern” now that it has been thrust into the spotlight by the remarks of Abbas, Erekat and His Beatitude. Sweeping these comments under the carpet is not an option.

President Bush and his partners – the European Union, Russia and the United Nations – need to end the humiliation they have all undergone for the last four years in their efforts to get the Road Map up and running – let alone implemented in even the smallest detail.

Their failure has been due in no small measure to the PLO’s original sin – its failure to amend the provisions of the PLO Charter and remove all offending and racist clauses that do not recognise the right of Israel to exist as the Jewish State. The mind set calling for the destruction of the Jewish State has never been really faced and exorcised – even by such an eminent person as His Beatitude.

President Bush must urgently flush out the bona fides and sincerity of the PLO to negotiate with Israel in realising the President’s vision. There is no point in allowing the negotiations to continue if these intemperate and highly offensive remarks are not unconditionally repudiated.

Better for President Bush to call it a day now rather than proceeding aimlessly along a path that you know with absolute certainty can only end up in failure because the PLO will never make the unconditional commitment to recognise Israel as the Jewish State. The President can only end up a certain loser.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice aptly summed up the situation at her December 21 press conference:

“there are a lot easier ways to build a legacy than to try to solve the Palestinian-Israeli issue.”

President Bush will soon be visiting the Holyland. Perhaps that is the time for him to declare that Israel is the Jewish State and anyone negotiating with Israel on his Road Map must accept that fundamental fact.

They say the Lord moves in strange ways. Has He sent a faux man of God to help a devout Christian finally understand and realise the futility and hopelessness of his well intended but totally misconceived vision to bring peace to the Jews and Arabs?

Annapolis clearly confirmed that these on-going negotiations with Israel will be undertaken by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – whose Charter specifically rejects the two state solution proposed by the President.

President Bush cannot be unmindful of the PLO’s pivotal role as one of the negotiating parties. He himself read out at Annapolis a joint statement prepared for the meeting which stated in the very first sentence:

“”The representatives of the government of the state of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, represented respectively by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Mahmoud Abbas, in his capacity as chairman of the PLO executive committee and president of the Palestinian Authority, have convened in Annapolis, Maryland, under the auspices of President George W. Bush of the United States of America, and with the support of the participants of this international conference …”

If President Bush needed any more confirmation of this fact, Mahmoud Abbas gave it to him in the first sentence of his speech:

“Allow me Mr. President to thank you in my capacity as Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole representative of the Palestinian people, and on behalf of the Palestinian people, for inviting us to this international conference.”

The PLO Charter is as anti the two state solution as could possibly be articulated – stating without equivocation that :

1. Palestine with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate is an indivisible territorial unit .

2. The Arab Palestinian people reject all solutions which are substituting (sic) for the total liberation of Palestine.

3. The Partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the State of Israel are entirely illegal

4. The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine and everything that has been based on them are deemed null and void.

5. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history

6. Jews do not constitute a single nation with an identity of its own.

How President Bush and Condoleezza Rice believe the PLO can negotiate in good faith for a two state solution in the face of these fundamental impediments to achieving such a result is one of the great mysteries that remains unanswered after the festivities, hand shakes and toasts have been concluded and everyone has gone home.

The time line for the successful completion of these negotiations is supposed to allow President Bush to leave office in January 2009 as the President who was able to bring peace to the Middle East – certainly an effort worth the Nobel Peace Prize, the eternal gratitude of the nations and the favourable judgement of history if he could pull it off.

But it is obvious this can never happen and that his departure from office will be ignominious and humiliating – unless the PLO first amends its Charter to excise these Articles immediately. President Bush and Ms. Rice should be insisting this be done now if these on-going negotiations are to have any prospect of success.

These amendments were promised 14 years ago but they still remain unchanged as testimony to an organisation that hates Jews, despises the notion of a two state solution and fails to recognise the binding effect of international law.

Mahmoud Abbas simply has no power or authority at the present time to negotiate for a two state solution because the PLO Charter expressly precludes him from doing so.

This is not some kind of technical hair splitting argument. It goes to the entire mindset under which negotiations are to be undertaken and the ability of the negotiating parties to achieve a solution.

Mr Abbas should be required to take steps to immediately repeal these provisions of the Covenant before any further negotiations take place. This is something he can implement – and very quickly. He may not be able to procure the release of kidnapped Israeli soldiers, he may not be able to stop terrorist attacks – but he can very easily convene a meeting of the National Council of the PLO to repeal these odious provisions of the Charter.

The capacity of the PLO to deliver peace – even if the above offending and offensive articles were removed today – is also highly questionable.

Respected veteran analyst Danny Rubinstein pointed this out very clearly in an article written by him in Ha’aretz on November 16 when he stated:

“The institutions of the PLO which presumed to represent the entire Palestinian nation have in recent years become obsolete and unimportant. They do not include any representation for a national religious movement like Hamas (which holds that religion takes precedence nationality (sic), although its supporters make up about one third of the Palestinian public…for quite some time now, the PLO has ceased to be a relevant body in Palestinian politics.”

President Bush and Ms Rice must wear rose coloured glasses or have very blinkered vision if they fail to recognise or acknowledge these basic failings in the ability and strength of the PLO to deliver any successful outcome for the President’s two state vision over the next twelve months.

It is incongruous that President Bush and Ms. Rice continue to dine and dialogue with this elderly bespectacled white- haired PLO Chairman in a Saville Row suit who purports to negotiate a two state solution for an organization which forbids it eventuating and which expressly states that its objective is to drive the Jews into the sea and out of a Palestine that belongs only to the Palestinian Arab people.

Allowing negotiations to continue on such a brittle base is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.

The President’s two state vision has never got off the ground since 2003 precisely because Abbas has never been required to have the PLO Charter amended to allow meaningful negotiations to be undertaken. It appears that President Bush and Ms Rice have learned nothing from that unmitigated disaster.

President Bush and Ms Rice will only have themselves to blame at the end of the day when these current negotiations also inevitably collapse.

Dr Rice says the bride and groom are going through “knotty discussions” which appear to be heading anywhere but tying the knot. Bridesmaid Tzipi Livni has publicly admitted there are “problems”.

This is certainly not a match made in heaven – rather a catch hatched in hell. The body language and forced smiles say it all. At the moment alarm bells – not wedding bells – are ringing.

President Bush and Condoleezza Rice are both suffering from work overload as potentially catastrophic events in Turkey and Pakistan rapidly unfold to put President Bush and Dr Rice under great stress. Annapolis is probably the last place they want to be thinking about at this moment.

These latest crises are an unwelcome intrusion into Dr Rice’s crowded appointment book as she ponders whether – and when – to send out the wedding invitations. Five years of fruitless diplomacy have stymied efforts by President Bush to get the bride and groom together to conceive the President’s godson – a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan.

The bride is not yet quite convinced and wants the fourteen years old engagement to continue. The groom wants the wedding now and has downgraded his expectations of having the baby within six months from then to a date no later than January 2009. Conception and birth within that ambitious time frame would be miraculous – even by the Holyland’s standards – given the groom’s sterile performance up till now.

Who to invite and what to talk about at the wedding has presented President Bush and Dr Rice with real headaches. How to get people to even come is an even greater challenge.

Bickering guests are the last thing one wants at Annapolis. Who will sit next to who might be tricky – but a creative events organiser like the State Department will probably come up with suitable table placements to make sure no one feels too uncomfortable.

The pecking order will be important too. Who sits – or stands – to the left and right of the President and Dr Rice- for even a cameo appearance – must be dominating lots of time behind State Department doors.

The timed arrivals of guests and the proceedings will also be watched closely by the myriad press corps assembled behind strategically located barriers. Media placement must also be of great concern to avoid any diplomatic crisis. Will al-Jazira get a better barrier position than CNN, ABC, the BBC or the XYZ?

Should there be a head table or not? Maybe protocol will best be served by having a round table which would symbolically reflect the ever increasing circles the President and Dr Rice have been running around in trying to get this wedding off the ground.

Last minute cancellations are bound to occur causing more grey hairs at the State Department. This is not a wedding to be organised by the faint hearted.

Most weddings suffer from too many speeches usually leaving the guests thoroughly bored. At Annapolis we are told the guests will listen to a joint speech written by the bride and groom which will be either very detailed on the core issues of their future relationship or downright boring and devoid of any material content – depending on which unidentified reliable source you are prepared to believe.

Whilst the bride and groom grapple with what they are going to say, the matchmaker – President Bush – should have no such problems. Indeed he wrote his speech years ago. Hopefully he will dig it up, dust it off and remind those who come to Annapolis of the following three pledges he made to the bride’s father Ariel Sharon on 14 April 2004 to persuade him that this union could even be a remote possibility:

1. The groom’s family have to give up the idea of living in Israel.

“It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.”

2. 450000 members of the bride’s family will not be booted out of their homes in the West Bank.

“In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”

3. The groom will not get every square metre of the West Bank as part of the dowry.

“As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338.”

Come to think of it, Dr Rice should consider limiting her guests to those who are prepared to drink a toast in honour of these three pledges. Guests can tick three appropriately worded boxes placed next to the one requesting their dietary requirements on the return prepaid acceptance card – to ensure they don‘t get to the wedding under false pretences.

Otherwise the probability is that the bride will be left at the altar and no one will get to catch the bouquet.

Sadder still – diplomatic and security reasons will prevent the wedding customs of the bride and groom being celebrated at Annapolis. Jews break a glass at weddings to solemnly remind them – in their moment of extreme happiness – of the destruction of their two Temples in their capitol Jerusalem over 2000 years ago. Arabs choose to fire bullets indiscriminately in the air, sometimes wounding – and even killing – innocent wedding guests and bystanders.

Allowing the possibility of either to occur could turn this wedding into the disaster of the year – if it isn’t already before it has even been held.