MOSCOW. (Yevgeny Satanovsky for RIA Novosti) - Diplomats, policymakers, journalists and experts are all discussing the upcoming conference on the Middle East in Annapolis as if something depends on it.
Almost sixty years have passed since the world community started tackling the Palestinian problem, but it is further away from its resolution than ever before.
There is no other issue that attracts so much attention from politicians, diplomats, religious and public figures, and the media. Refugees from Palestine have received more money over the decades than any others. The Palestinians do not have a state, but this is not because they have been ignored. Quite the contrary, so many people have attended to this problem and so intensively that moving toward the goal has become more important than the result. There is no Palestinian state primarily because Yasser Arafat preferred to remain a revolutionary leader rather than the president of a small and poor country. None of his successors has a fraction of his power and the times have irreversibly changed.
The roadmap, which the conference is supposed to revive, has never had a chance to succeed, nor can it now be implemented. What success can one speak about at the peak of the civil war in Palestine, after HAMAS severed its agreement with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, an agreement, which was concluded on the Koran in the shade of the Kaaba? Only al-Qaeda and Iran can exert influence on the Palestinian radicals.
The Israelis are disappointed about the results of the "peace process," which has not given them either peace or security. They do not believe the promises and guarantees of the world community, the U.S. President or their own policymakers and with good reason. No Israeli prime minister will refuse to talk about peace or will argue with the American president if the latter needs to save the face of American policy. None can make the concessions demanded by the Palestinian leaders, who are not even ready to recognize Israel a Jewish state. If Ehud Olmert promises them what they want in Annapolis, he will not be able to abide by his word without risking a civil war at home.
The roadmap has no economic grounds. During the Israeli occupation, the standard of living in the Gaza Strip was twice as high, and in the West Bank - three times as high as in Egypt. It was higher than in Lebanon and a little lower than in Jordan or Syria. Modern Palestine's economy is based on welfare. It has come to a halt without the Israeli locomotive. Fighting with Israel, the Palestinians have lost 200,000 jobs in that country and have been replaced with workers from Thailand and the Philippines, Romania and Ukraine, China and Moldova. Israeli President Shimon Perez may talk as much as he likes about chances to remedy the Palestinian economy but it is easier to give him another Nobel Peace Prize than make Israeli employers believe him.
The problem of Palestinian refugees is one more deadlock. Their number was 914,000 in 1950. If one and the same criteria were used to register people as refugees by all UN agencies, from 350,000 to 500,000 Palestinians would have this status in 2007, and their problem could be coped with. But the Palestinian refugees are an exception and their descendants are also considered refugees. From 1997 to 2007, the number of Palestinian refugees under the care of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) increased from 3.4 million to 4.5 million, while the agency's personnel increased from 20,500 to 29,000. On Palestinian territory, in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, refugee camps did not emerge under the Israelis; for 19 years they existed under Egyptian and Jordanian control.
The situation with the Palestinians is unique - not a single group of refugees has been renounced by compatriots. From the Palestinian view, they should live only in the place, from which they or their ancestors fled. Therefore, a Palestinian leader who will relinquish his right to Israel's entire territory will suffer the same fate as Emir Abdullah, Anwar Sadat, Pierre Gemayel, and hundreds of well-born and thousands of common Arabs, who were killed, trying to live in peace with Israel.
What can Annapolis do with radical Islam and the chaos in Palestine? Local Christians have no future in a country that is ruled by several hundred leaders of tribes, clans, radical and criminal groups; each town and village have their own ruling criminals, while the influence of both Palestinian governments, be it Abbas or Hamas, is largely fiction.
If we lived in the middle of the 20th century, we could imagine that Palestine might be put under external control. In this case, the militants would be disarmed; terrorists and other criminals isolated; the economy, infrastructure and the social environment would be reformed, and the media and schools would stop turning Palestinian children into suicide bombers. In 25-50 years, Palestine would become an ideal sought by the initiators of the "peace process." But we live in the 21st century and nobody can implement this option. Uncontrolled Palestine has not become a state and will not become one in the future. Its people and elite have demonstrated that they are not ready for statehood-imposed restrictions.
The Palestinians should acquire leaders who will not only declare intentions to please the donors but who will be able to control the people under their rule. Until this happens, no plan and no funds invested in it will produce results. Future Palestinian leaders must be able to build their own home rather than fight with neighbors; they must feed themselves rather than count on outside help; they must think of those who live in Palestinian refugee camps now rather than the future generations in whose name they are destroying the present in their own country. The conference in Annapolis will not produce such people.
There are unrecognized countries, which are de facto states, such as Kosovo and Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Kurdistan. There are "former" states, including Somalia and Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan. And there is also Palestine, which has not become a state. The idea of a Palestinian state as the solution of the Palestinian problem has exhausted itself and is becoming fiction in world politics. The split into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is just the beginning. Twelve to 15 enclaves may emerge there in the near future, each of which will have its own relations with its neighbors. It is time to help Palestinians, rather than Palestine, naturalize, settle down and start independent life - first and foremost, those who live in refugee camps. This is a painful process but unlike Annapolis, it may produce results.
Meanwhile, officials of international organizations, policymakers, diplomats, journalists and experts are concentrating on Annapolis. Taking part in the meeting, the Palestinian president may receive funds from donors, the Israeli premier will retain his post, while the U.S. President will prove, if only to himself, that he is a "peacemaker." This means that for years ahead, the bureaucrats whose careers are linked to Palestine will carry this suitcase without the handle - they would be sorry to leave it behind, although it is heavy and cumbersome, and there is no prospect that the problem would ever be resolved.
Yevgeny Satanovsky is president of the Institute of the Middle East.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
