As the Annapolis Peace Photo Op approaches, the situation on the ground gets more muddled by the day.  The conference, downgraded from a peace negotiation session to a meeting in which general declarations will be read followed by dinner, is meant to be the opening round of more serious talks that will take place over the coming year to sort out the differences between the two sides and arrive at a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.  After Madrid, Oslo, Wye Plantation, Camp David, the Quartet, and the Road Map, we have finally arrived at the US Naval Academy, and from here, presumably, we will embark on the high road to peace.  And if not, another wave of Palestinian terrorism is threatened.  It seems like déjà vu all over again.

In anticipation of the conference, Hamas is stepping up its terrorist attacks out of Gaza.  Yesterday Israel witnessed one of the heaviest rocket and mortar barrages in recent weeks against Sederot, Ashkelon, and smaller Israeli communities in the area, as well as one attempt by terrorists to climb the security barrier and another to place a bomb near it.  The latter two attacks resulted in the IDF killing four terrorists, but there are plenty more where they came from.  The IDF has been placed on high alert, knowing that Hamas is planning a wave of attacks meant to drown the conference in Jewish blood. 

It has become an accepted fact of life that any move to talk peace, no matter how flimsy, elicits a wave of terrorist attacks attempting to spoil the attempt.  Accordingly, a 29 year old Israeli was shot and killed while driving on a road in the West Bank last night.  Given the volume of fire coming out of Gaza, both in rockets and incursion attempts, a West Bank terrorist attack is somewhat noteworthy.  But what makes this attack really interesting is that the perpetrators are not from the bad guys (the rejectionist, Islamic, radical Hamas), but from the good guys (the moderate, secular, peace loving Fatah, led by Abu Mazen and the guests of honor at the conference-to-be).  A spokesman for the terrorists, from the al Aksa Martyrs Brigade branch of Fatah, said that the attack was “a protest against Annapolis.” 

The Middle East has always been a confusing place, but now it’s getting a bit difficult to tell the two sides apart without a scorecard.  So we have Hamas attacking Israelis to protest Annapolis; Fatah attacking Israelis to protest Annapolis; while all the while we’ve been told that terrorism was the outcome of despair and poverty, and that if given a reasonable horizon of hope, the terrorists will cease and desist.  It would seem that peace on the one hand and despair due to absence of peace on the other produce the same constant outcome: terrorist attacks.

While their terrorists are shooting and killing Israelis, the Fatah gang, aka the Palestinian Authority, is weighing in with its usual set of demands and threatening more post-conference violence in anticipation of the trip to Annapolis.  As pre-conditions to the conference go, they seem pretty routine: an independent Palestinian state within six months, removal of all IDF security checkpoints, release of another 1500 terrorists now and of all the rest soon, and the immediate return of the PLO institutions to Jerusalem.  The Road Map demand to end terrorism as a first step?  Not an issue.  We’re talking peace here.

So, off we go to Annapolis, to negotiate with terrorist leaders who can’t even control their own organization, let alone other terrorist organizations, most of their territory, and their population; who demand agreements on their final demands before negotiations may begin; who threaten even greater violence if their demands are not met in advance; and who essentially reject Israeli demands to end violence and the conflict with the Jewish State.  Why bother?  What does Israel hope to get from the trip?  Maybe it’s all about the frequent flyer miles…

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