Gathering Israelis and Arabs May Have Been the Real Feat

Discussion Policy

Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

What was different yesterday, according to officials who were present and Middle East experts, was the audience. "The meeting was the message," said Martin S. Indyk of the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

Saudi Arabia and Syria, in particular, sent representatives to Annapolis reluctantly and with skepticism. But they came, and U.S. and Israeli officials and their allies saw that as a reason for optimism, with one Israeli noting the intense dismay of Iran over Syria's presence. "There are many states around the table, of which some don't even have diplomatic relations with each other," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters in Annapolis. "This in itself is already a step forward."

Palestinian leaders also seemed pleased by the large Arab turnout, which included the head of the Arab League, and delegates from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and a dozen other countries. "We as Palestinians would never risk going alone to the negotiating table," said Nabil Abu Rudineh, Abbas's spokesman.

The last time such a large number of Arab officials appeared with their Israeli counterparts was in the 1990s. The Saudis were observers at the 1991 Madrid peace conference, which saw Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians take center stage in an event that led to an Israeli-Jordanian peace deal and to Israel's nearly successful negotiation with Syria over the return of the Golan Heights. The Saudis also participated in a number of follow-up meetings until 2000.

But Ross noted that the presence of so many non-Arab countries may mute the symbolism of the event, and he expressed skepticism that Bush's efforts will succeed.

"We've seen plenty of promising initial discussions regarding progress between the Israelis and Palestinians. The devil is in the details, and every process has broken down. So it's very dangerous to read too much into these processes too early," said David Rothkopf of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"We're here in year eight of the Bush administration, and this is the first serious effort they've made to address the top [issue] of the agenda of every president for the past 40 years," Rothkopf said. He added that the meeting's message might be "too little, too late."

Staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this report.