February 25, 2007	Sunday	Safar 7, 1428

JERUSALEM: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is trying to start over in the Middle East, but she keeps running into the past.

Her plans to energise stagnant peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians were frustrated by the same obstacles that have defeated diplomats before her: grudges, suspicions, power struggles, plain old politics of the Israelis and Palestinians themselves.

The peace summit Rice convened this week turned out to be an awkward affair with inconclusive results that left uncertain prospects.

“For all the talk of a ‘new Middle East’, there’s a way the old Middle East sneaks up and grabs you from behind,” said Jon Alterman, chief Middle East analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.It doesn’t help that the United States, seen as an essential ingredient in any successful deal, is also perceived as having abdicated or avoided its role as broker for the first six years of President George W. Bush’s term.

Ms Rice has said she will work hard over the two-year balance of the Bush presidency to build an independent Palestinian state.

“A lot of people have tried, and maybe I’m only going to be the latest in a long list of people who have tried” without success, Ms Rice told reporters after she met for two hours with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Despite the odds, she says she will keep trying. Ms Rice said she will convene another such session “when it’s useful”, but nothing has been announced. She also said she wants Olmert and Abbas to meet without her.

The three-way meeting was supposed to look beyond the daily frustrations and fears that often define the Israeli-Palestinian relationship and strengthen Abbas in his internal power struggle with Hamas militants.

Less than two weeks before the session, Abbas surprised Rice by cutting a sudden deal with Hamas, blamed for past suicide attacks on Israelis but also a potent political organisation in the Palestinian territories. President George W. Bush and Rice refuse to deal with Hamas, which is on the US list of foreign terrorist organisations.

Abbas’ planned coalition government with the militants appears to fall far short of international demands that Palestinian leaders renounce violence, accept Israel and abide by past agreements the Palestinians made with Israel and others.

Israeli leaders were outraged, and the editorial pages of major newspapers even more so. The deal seemed to confirm many Israelis’ suspicions that Palestinian leaders cannot be trusted or that the Palestinians themselves prize enmity with Israel over an uncertain peace.

The moderate, secular Abbas had been weakened by 13 months of infighting and recent deadly street clashes and decided he needed this deal more than he needed Rice’s blessings. His are the shoulders on which the United States is resting peace hopes, but it is not clear that he will emerge from the deal with the political strength to carry it off.

The Bush administration has been playing a waiting game since Hamas trounced Abbas’ Fatah Party in parliamentary elections a year ago, trying to starve the Hamas leadership of vital international aid while building up Abbas for a future election.US officials say they do not know if that strategy can hold up under Abbas’ power-sharing arrangement, but he remains all that the United States has.

Ms Rice plans to continue to press Congress for nearly $86 million in direct aid for Abbas’ security services this year. The money would pay for training and equipment, but not guns or bullets, Ms Rice aides say.

The request hit trouble in Congress even before the power-sharing deal because of the history of corruption and violence among the armed Palestinian factions.

Ms Rice said she could have cancelled the summit because of the changed circumstances but decided that going ahead could build trust and keep communications open. Afterward, she said one accomplishment was merely getting the two leaders together at a difficult time. The Hamas deal might have kept the two sides apart for a long time had the summit not already been in the works, she said.

US officials including Ms Rice refused to provide more than an outline of topics covered during the meeting, but Israeli and Palestinian officials have offered a few details.

The incomplete reports are probably self-serving on both sides, meant primarily for domestic political consumption. That said, they make the meeting sound more like the gripe sessions of old than a coming-out party for a new US push for peace.

Ms Rice said the three did discuss the “political horizon”, as she calls the eventual goal of an independent Palestine.

They even went out on the balcony of her luxury suite in Jerusalem’s plush David Citadel Hotel for a view of the fabled Old City. The view encompasses disputed ground sacred to three religions and neatly illustrates the difficulty of her task.—AP