By Shaul Arieli, Bitter Lemons, 06.02.08 

Besides producing a display of international support for the peace process, the Annapolis conference succeeded in generating a one-year timetable for negotiating a final status agreement--until US President George W. Bush packs his bags and makes room for his successor. The latter will then require considerable time to study the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--even assuming it is awarded priority over the anticipated recession in the American economy and additional urgent American issues.
Then too, if by early 2009 there is no progress in the peace process, the chances of finding Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas still in office are slim, as are those of an Israeli center-left government headed by Ehud Olmert or his replacement remaining in power. Finally, while the regional system--Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq--is not subject to this timetable, its dynamics merely strengthen the need to accelerate the Israeli-Palestinian track.
Time is also not in Israel's favor due to the weakening of Fateh and danger signs that the Palestinians are increasingly inclined to forego a two-state solution and struggle for a single "state of all its citizens" in which they are the majority. Accordingly, Israel should make haste; it should not fail to meet its negotiations and timetable objectives because of organizational or negotiations management mistakes. The time at hand permits the orderly and consistent management of negotiations devoted to the difficult task of closing the real gaps between the two sides.
Israeli PM Ehud Olmert should appoint a negotiating team, a ministerial steering committee and a peace administration. He should present a long-term (far beyond the next elections) vision and set of objectives regarding the nature of the future political, security and economic relationship between Israel and Palestine.
The peace administration will have to deal urgently with several preliminary issues. First, it should identify and define the two sides' interests. Israel's interests could comprise the non-return of refugees to Israel, the demilitarization of the area west of the Jordan River with regard to foreign armies and heavy weaponry and the retention of most of the settlers under Israeli sovereignty in the large settlement blocs. Palestinian interests could include the establishment of an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with its capital in East Jerusalem and a territorial link between Gaza and the West Bank.
Second, the peace administration should identify all parties who have an interest in the agreement: supporters from the moderate Arab states, the US and the EU, detractors such as Iran and Hizballah and even the Arab citizens of Israel. Third, a project definition should be prepared based on a determination of the topics to be negotiated: core issues like end of claims, refugees, Jerusalem, borders and security; and generic issues like water, the environment and systems of government, economy and justice. Fourth, the peace administration should define a mechanism for harmonizing the management of negotiations with factors that influence both the process and daily realities. These might include construction of the separation fence, regulation of movement, Palestinian economic development, the confrontation with Hamas in Gaza, the implementation of roadmap phase I, prisoner releases, etc.
In the second and central stage, and based on the staff work described above, the peace administration should formulate and recommend the positions to be presented by Israel in the negotiations along with modes of managing the negotiations, all in conformance with political directives determined by the ministerial steering committee headed by the prime minister. These positions will serve the negotiating teams, whether openly or covertly, officially or semi-officially.
First, the leadership will determine the parameters, principles and areas of flexibility for negotiating, with definitions similar in detail to those presented by US President Bill Clinton in late 2000. The ensuing negotiations should be managed in separate working groups and in three main clusters: core issues, derivatives of core issues and generic. The peace administration should offer professional support for each negotiating team while the ministerial steering committee should weigh in with political decisions. By the third quarter of the year, the negotiators will be called upon to formulate a detailed draft framework agreement in which important gaps still separating the two sides--assuming they are few--can be presented to a concluding leadership summit.
The signing of an agreement will activate dozens of expert teams charged with formulating detailed annexes regarding a variety of issues. The negotiating team, drawing on peace administration staff work, will be charged with formulating an implementation plan that is highly sensitive to extremist threats from both sides. It will comprise physical conditions for implementation, e.g., timetables for removing settlements, IDF redeployment, completing the separation fence along the agreed border, establishing two capitals in Jerusalem, creating an international mechanism for dealing with refugee issues, etc. It will also deal with reciprocal conditions emerging from the two sides' commitments, such as referenda, elections and effective control over weapons and security forces.
Similarly, the implementation plan should address both desirable and feasible modes of normalization in accordance with the Arab peace initiative, international involvement, aspects of a UN Security Council resolution that recognizes the new agreement, economic investments, transfer of international institutions to the two Jerusalem capitals, etc.
A lot of worthy national decisions were never carried out as a consequence of a lack of capacity to render them operative. Israel must avoid relegating the Annapolis declaration to this category.
Colonel (res.) Shaul Arieli, a former Gaza brigade commander, headed the Management Center for the Interim Agreement during the Rabin/Peres era and the Peace Administration under PM Ehud Barak.