Gov. Palin parachuted headfirst into very rocky terrain when endorsing President Bush’s proposal that would see a new Arab state created between Israel and Jordan – declaring unequivocally:

“A two-state solution is the solution.”

 Further endorsing President Bush’s stance of actively engaging with the disputants Gov. Palin asserted:

“And Secretary Rice, having recently met with leaders on one side or the other there also, still in these waning days of the Bush administration, trying to forge that peace. And that needs to be done, and that will be top-of-an-agenda item also under a McCain-Palin administration.”

What Gov. Palin seems to have ignored is the fact that Secretary Rice has been trying to forge that peace for the last six years – yet has not even managed to see it get to first base. American power and influence has once again been exposed as a toothless tiger when it comes to resolving the issue of Palestine.

The timetables meticulously laid out in President Bush’s original 2003 proposal have not been met. Frantic efforts by Secretary Rice to advance the negotiations since the conference held in Annapolis almost a year ago – supposedly aimed at reaching an agreement before President Bush vacates the Presidency next January – have gone nowhere.

The negotiations have stalled on the two following fundamental demands made by the Palestinian Authority that Israel cannot possibly accept and on which the Palestinian Authority refuses to budge:

Gov. Palin – no doubt – was anxious to avoid acknowledging what has been one of President Bush‘s worst policy failures – pursuing his personal vision to establish a second Arab State in Palestine in addition to Jordan which occupies 77% of the territory comprised in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.

However Gov. Palin’s claim that it would be a “top-of-an-agenda-item under a McCain- Palin administration” indicates that they will continue to actively pursue this failed policy when it has no chance at all of ever being implemented unless the Palestinian Authority relents on the above demands. Since both these demands have been consistently pressed for the last 40 years by the Arab world without change or modification it is difficult to see how President Bush’s two-state solution can ever be achieved.

15 years spent by Israel in unsuccessfully trying to achieve just this very objective with the Palestinian Authority since 1993 only reinforces this conclusion.

How much longer then will John McCain invest his – and America’s – time, prestige and effort in pursuing President Bush’s failed policy? Hopefully he will let the voters know in the next scheduled Presidential debate. The question needs to be asked and answered.

The argument that he must keep on trying is pointless. This only perpetuates the killing and traumatisation of both Arabs and Jews without any prospect of ever ending or even defusing the conflict.

Senator Biden was far more circumspect in refusing to endorse the Roadmap in the strident terms adopted by Gov. Palin – stating that an Obama administration would employ:

 “thoughtful, real, live diplomacy that understand that you must back Israel in letting them negotiate, support their negotiation and stand with them, not insist on policies like this administration has.”

 Significantly these comments indicate that :

There is no doubt these negotiations will inevitably end in impasse. The sooner they are terminated and a new direction adopted, the sooner some real and tangible progress will be possible.

It certainly would be embarrassing for both John McCain and Barack Obama if either Israel or the Palestinian Authority was to announce the termination of the current negotiations during the last stages of this Presidential contest. Both contestants would then have to state their positions on the future direction of relations between Israel, the Palestinian Authority and their Arab neighbours – Jordan and Egypt.

At the moment Messrs. Mc Cain and Obama can both plead that this is a purely hypothetical question that is both irrelevant and unnecessary for them to answer. Their Vice Presidential running mates have served them well in the statements each made during their debate.

Forcing the issue now would certainly set the remaining Presidential debates – and the elections – well and truly alight. However given the nuances of the Middle East and the apparent agreement to negotiate at least until President Bush leaves office – any such precipitate action by either side is unlikely to occur.

Inevitably therefore the current game will continue to be played out until President Bush is replaced – when his vision can then be finally abandoned by either side walking off the field because of the atrocious conditions. America by then will have voted in a new President with no idea of what he would then do.

The operation of America’s democratic process is indeed a wondrous sight to behold.

David Singer is an Australian Lawyer, a Foundation Member of the International Analyst Network and Convenor of Jordan is Palestine International — an organization calling for sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza to be allocated between Israel and Jordan as the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine.

Previous articles written by him can be found at http://www.jordanispalestine.blogspot.com

This call to remove every Jew living in the West Bank – 500000 men, women and children – was accepted in total silence by the United Nations. No urgent meeting of the General Assembly or any of its Human Rights Committees was called to condemn this racial vilification of Jews by a former Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority and its chief negotiator with Israel.

One remembers how fervently world leaders correctly argued that you couldn’t blame all Moslems for the terrorist actions of those few who hijack Islam and commit horrible atrocities worldwide in the name of Allah.

No similar statements were heard from those same leaders this week condemning Mr Queri for calling for the removal of those 500000 Jews because of the misguided actions of a few.

Collective punishment – not to be tolerated for Gazan Arabs – was perfectly acceptable when it involved West Bank Jews.

Indeed the UN Security Council met just three days after Mr. Qurei’s outrageous statement –yet raised not one word of protest or censure at his highly offensive and hate-ridden remarks.

Instead it passed Resolution 1850 (2008) by 14 votes to 0 – with Libya abstaining – declaring “its support for the negotiations initiated at Annapolis on 27 November 2007 and its commitment to the irreversibility of the bilateral negotiations“ and called “on both parties to fulfil their obligations under the Performance-Based Roadmap, as stated in their Annapolis Joint Understanding and refrain from any steps that could undermine confidence or prejudice the outcome of negotiations.”

One could not imagine a more destructive statement designed to undermine confidence or to prejudice the outcome of the Annapolis negotiations than that delivered by Mr. Qurei.

His demand defiantly flies in the face of the written commitment given by President Bush to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on 14 April 2004 – forming an integral part of the Roadmap negotiating process under the auspices of the Quartet – America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

In that letter President Bush stated:

“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. 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. “

In declaring its support for the Annapolis negotiations the Security Council conveniently ignored the basis on which those negotiations were undertaken by Israel as expressed in these clear and unambiguous terms by its Prime Minister – Ehud Olmert – at the opening of the Annapolis conference:

“The negotiations will be based on previous agreements between us, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map and the April 14, 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.”

All the international players sitting in the Security Council – including outgoing US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – were surely aware that Mr Qurei’s statement sounded the death knell for the Annapolis negotiations and signalled the end of any hope for a successful outcome of those negotiations.

Yet instead of condemning Mr Qurei’s statement – or demanding its retraction – Ms. Rice had the effrontery to tell the Security Council that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators:

“had made the choice to defeat an ideology of hatred with one of hope”

The only conclusion that one can draw from the Security Council’s extraordinary conduct in totally ignoring Mr Qurei’s statement is its unwillingness to face up to the fact that Annapolis is finished, President Bush’s dream has turned into a nightmare and the Quartet’s strategy in backing President Bush’s Roadmap has exposed it as totally impotent in having any influence to determine the allocation of sovereignty in the West Bank between Jews and Arabs.

The Security Council by its silence has offered encouragement to those Jew haters like Mr Qurei who for the last 130 years have opposed Jews having any right to live in their biblical homeland – the West Bank – or indeed within any part of the 23% of Palestine designated by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter as the site for the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home.

In doing nothing to disavow the Arabs from pursuing their long standing enmity and racial hatred of the Jews, the Security Council has ignored a whole body of international law on the issue and given comfort to the long held Arab view that everything done since the creation of the Mandate in 1920 is deemed null and void.

“Jews out” is indeed a call that is still alive and kicking in the Middle East.

This racist fantasyland has been given a considerable boost by the Security Council’s flirtation with – and failure to unequivocally repudiate – Mr Qurei’s remarks when endorsing Resolution 1850. United Nations efforts to eliminate all forms of racism worldwide have been seriously compromised.

RIP President Bush’s Performance –Based Roadmap. RIP Annapolis. RIP the United Nations.

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.

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.

Tickets have been finally mailed out for this eagerly anticipated event to a large number of so far unidentified VIP’s who will drop into Annapolis to attend a gala dinner on 26 November to be followed by a full blown performance the following day. They are slotted to fly out after meeting the two principal actors – Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas – who will be desperately trying to get the show on the road once again after a series of abysmal failures over the last four years

The media are busily speculating who will turn up and who will get the best seats in the house. Hopes are high that prominent and highly influential Saudi Arabian and Syrian entrepreneurs will join the audience to show their confidence in and unqualified backing for “Road Map” rather than their own production “Arab Peace Initiative“ which has not been publicly performed since it was written in 2003.

Optimistic expectations for the successful revival of “Road Map” have been dramatically toned down as disagreements have emerged over the past few months in relation to the precise wording of the program. Constant bickering and feuding between Olmert and Abbas have led to friction between them as each has tried to act out and justify his star role by influencing the content of the program to be presented.

Doubts that the show would be staged have been finally laid to rest as the President and his influential backers – Russia, the European Union and the United Nations – have decided that the show must go on – no matter what – in the best traditions of the theatre of the absurd in which this farce is being played out.

No doubt the producer – President Bush – and the director – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – are hoping that the Annapolis revival will have a happy ending just like the very successful musical “Mary Poppins” currently running in London’s West End and on Broadway.

The storyline in “Mary Poppins” is summarised as follows:

“Jane and Michael Banks are in need of a nanny, every governess has quit and with their mother fighting for women’s rights and their father at the bank all hours of the day it is imperative they find a suitable candidate. When their father rips up the advert they wrote, they are resigned to the fact that their next nanny will have none of the attributes they are looking for – then Mary Poppins arrives and their lives change for ever.”

http://www.show-and-stay.co.uk/LONDON-SHOWS/mary-poppins.html

This is remarkably similar to the story that will be unveiled at the revival of “Road Map” in Annapolis:

“Jews and Arabs are in need of a mediator, every previous applicant has quit and with the Palestinian Authority fighting for Arab rights and Israel in occupation of the West Bank all hours of the day it is imperative they find a suitable candidate. As the Road Map is in danger of being ripped up they are resigned to the fact that their next mediator will have none of the attributes they are looking for – then Condoleezza Rice arrives and their lives change for ever”

No doubt Condoleezza would consider herself to be the equal of Mary who modestly spoke of her unique qualifications in the following manner:

“I’m practically perfect in every way, Practically perfect that’s my forte. Uncanny nannies are hard to find, Unique yet meek unspeakably kind, I’m practically perfect not slightly soiled, Running like an engine that’s just been freshly oiled”

Condoleezza will indeed have the opportunity to strut her wares at Annapolis and attempt to emulate Mary. She indeed has the capacity to change lives forever but current indications are that they will be worsened rather than bettered.

Her mediating effort in removing Israel from control of the Philadelphi crossing on the border between Egypt and Gaza has run more like a rusty engine than a well oiled machine allowing weapons and explosives to be smuggled into Gaza at will – thence to be subsequently directed at Israeli civilian population centres on a daily basis.

Her frequent flying trips to the Middle East using six star executive jets have failed to bring about any change of heart in the demands made by Mahmoud Abbas – unlike the loveable Mary who soared out of the skies and into the hearts of everyone she encountered using just her umbrella to do so.

Condoleezza will confront Mahmoud Abbas who has shown no inclination to play his leading role with any real conviction or authority as he stubbornly clings to his star billing whilst all indicators show he is not really up to the role in which he has been cast.

His co-star Ehud Olmert could soon find himself indisposed for future appearances in “Road Map” due to other commitments of a political and business nature that could keep him centre stage in other places thereby necessitating an understudy to replace him if the Annapolis revival is to be successfully continued.

A new buzz word could emerge to describe the performance at Annapolis rivalling “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” – the title of the smash hit in “Mary Poppins.”

That word could be Annapolisticclaptrapisovertlysurreptitious”. Broadly translated it means “the talk at Annapolis will be contrived, foolish, insincere and pretentious and will be characterized by misrepresentation of the truth.”

“Road Map” will probably be artificially resuscitated at Annapolis and briefly enjoy a right of return to the world stage, but it can never be the box office success its proponents envisage.

Circumstances have materially changed since the President’s original script was written but the uncompromising position of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority hasn’t. Their continuing failure to act out their roles as described in President Bush’s explanatory program notes guarantees that “Road Map” will continue to languish and finally collapse in a heap like so many other similar stage shows such as “Oslo“ “Madrid” and “Camp David 2000“.

The President needs to go back to the drawing board, thoroughly rewrite the script and completely change the cast and characters. Just a spoonful of sugar can certainly help the medicine go down in the most delightful way.

Maybe then there will be something wonderful to sing and dance about.