Before the next mistake, an idea for peace

In what is becoming an annual ritual, we poor nations of the Middle East are about to be subjected to another glitzy round of optimistic photo-ops collectively but inaccurately known outside the world as a “peace process.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy apparently came up with the latest idea:

Sarkozy seeks to capitalize on the momentum created by the participation of European leaders at a summit Sunday in Sharm al-Sheikh summit on the recent hostilities in Gaza, according to Le Figaro.

The paper also states that Sarkozy convinced German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who had feared the cease-fire would not be kept, to attend the summit in Egypt.

The goal of the conference, the paper reported, is to reach a peace accord within a year, and it will be held a few weeks after a meeting of European foreign ministers in Egypt due to take place in February.

The form of the summit will reportedly be similar to that of the one the United States hosted in Annapolis in late 2007.

Here’s our problem with this “peace with a year” idea. According to our sources, Israeli intelligence believes Hamas would win election in every single Palestinian city were they held right now. Hamas rejects every arrangement with the Zionist entity that does not somehow lead to its destruction. The organization even took pains not to “accept” – but only “acknowledge” – the ceasefire announced yesterday.

If peace with Hamas itself is impossible, and peace with Fatah is meaningless because it doesn’t solve Gaza and may not hold traction in the Palestinian street, what could a French diplomat’s cajoling possibly change here?

We got here through the mistakes of many sides, including the Israelis, the Americans and the Europeans. But most importantly, we got here because the Palestinians have not yet decided as a nation to take their fate into their own hands. The leadership robbed its own people and the international community of an entire national economy. They refuse to begin even the most basic processes of sovereignty until all issues are resolved, things like currency, customs, diplomatic representation.

There is only one path to peace we can see. The US and a significant Arab party – Saudi Arabia? Egypt? – must begin a serious nation-building project in the West Bank, recreating an economy, an education system, the trappings of statehood (recall that both a US president and an Israeli PM have publicly declared the goal of negotiations to be a Palestinian state). Create a Palestine that will allow Israelis to believe that a pullout of settlements from the West Bank won’t bring a second Hamastan and rockets on Tel Aviv.

Is Sarkozy planning to do that? Does Obama, weighed down by the US financial implosion and blood on the line in Afghanistan and Iraq, have the bureaucratic bandwidth to engage in such a project? Can Egypt or Saudi Arabia participate in something like this without ruining it by trying to control it?

We don’t know. But we do know this: this conflict has not continued for lack of French cocktail parties.