For sports fans like George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice, the Annapolis meeting is the diplomatic equivalent of baseball's suicide squeeze bunt play: in the last inning of a nine-inning game, with runners on base and everyone wound up with anticipation, the manager tries a daring move that puts all the runners in motion while the hitter taps a soft bunt that aims to bring in a run and win the game. The suicide squeeze is one of the most exciting plays in baseball, perhaps in any sports. But it usually fails, because it is based on a combination of desperation and offensive deceit that rarely add up to a winning strategy.

The Annapolis meeting is a diplomatic suicide squeeze. It is unlikely to succeed, because the conditions and/or motives of the principal players -- the U.S., Israel and half the Palestinians represented by President Mahmoud Abbas -- are not conducive to the sort of daring moves and substantive compromises that are needed to achieve a full and fair peace. The Americans seem motivated primarily by a desperate need to elicit Arab and Iranian support on Iraq. They are not playing the fair mediator's role, but rather persisting in supporting Israeli positions more often than coming down in the middle of Israeli-Palestinian issues. America’s sudden, urgent exuberance for Arab-Israeli peace-making within a year, after six years of total neglect or blatant pro-Israeli bias, is neither convincing nor sincere. Trying to force through a peace accord on an American presidential timetable is likely to fail, as it did in 2000 when Bill Clinton tried the same thing, albeit with a bit more sincerity.

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We can only assess the Annapolis meeting results on the basis of two elements: the words spoken, and the diplomatic procedures set in motion. On both counts, I find the gathering disappointing, though the real test is yet to come. So we should not be too hasty in pronouncing this process a success or failure. There is a very small chance that both sides will make bold compromises in the negotiations to come. The Arab world may yet actively push its 2002 peace plan with Israel. Europe and Russia might weigh in with equal force; the U.S. might finally act as a fair and decisive mediator; Arab and Israeli civil societies might yet play a dynamic and constructive role in pushing their leaders to make the fair and lasting peace that the majorities of both people clearly want and would support.

But the chances of success remain slim, because Annapolis’s words and procedures were unimpressive. That’s mainly because they expect weak and vulnerable leaders in all three principal countries to move ahead by rehashing what’s already failed.

The words spoken at Annapolis are important because they reflect political positions and actions on the ground. Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas reiterated known, entrenched positions and offered nothing new in their texts; that suggested a minimal will to compromise.

The joint understanding between the parties and President Bush’s speech are more significant. The joint statement is problematic because it does not specifically refer to U.N. resolutions as the starting point to resolve the conflict. It also makes the U.S. the judge of both sides’ compliance with the ‘roadmap’ requirements. But the U.S. has played this role before, and failed – though it remains unclear if its past failure was due to pro-Israeli bias, structural diplomatic incompetence, or weak resolve. The U.S. has not proved itself to be either an impartial or persistent mediator in the Middle East (unlike in Northern Ireland, where it gave a stellar performance). Bush’s letter to Ariel Sharon in 2005 supporting Israel’s views on borders, settlements, and refugees disqualifies America as an impartial arbiter.

This is a dangerous attempt to substitute American will for U.N. resolutions and international law as the basis for a negotiated resolution of the conflict. Bush’s references to Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people also brings the U.S. down on the Israeli side of the dispute about whether Israel is a Jewish nation or the state of all its people, including one-fifth of its citizens who are non-Jewish Christian and Muslim Arabs, and Druze.

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