Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced at the end of the Annapolis peace conference the resumption of final status negotiations as of December 12. Following the conference, Palestinians and Israelis expressed optimism towards the track resulted from this meeting in spite of different estimations to its timetable. Palestinians say that the comprehensive political settlement can be achieved within one year while Israelis think that negotiations may take more than one year. The time horizon must be open in order not to practice pressures on negotiators or led negotiations to failure.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit said that the Annapolis track represents a major step and that Annapolis meeting revealed that the international community aims at settling the Arab-Israeli conflict in general and Palestinian-Israeli conflict in specific as soon as possible.

In my opinion, what happened in the Annapolis conference represents an important step on the way of the political settlement to the Palestinian question and opens the way before the settlement on other tracks. Palestinians must get ready to hard and serious negotiations backed by the Arab countries. The Arab moderate states, according to the US administration, must utilize their positive relations with Washington with the purpose of practicing pressures aiming at reaching the political settlement agreement within one year as the US Bush administration shall witness the beginning of the application of said agreements.

It is also important to give the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) the full opportunity and help it to realize this goal.

By: Ibrahim Nafie

Al Ahram

30/11/2007