Inside the Aswan talks

What senior Arab officials are telling me behind the scenes about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process going into Saturday's "Arab Quartet" meeting with Condi Rice in Aswan, Egypt:

--Arab diplomats are heartened yet remain skeptical by the intense interest the Bush administration is now showing toward the peace process after a six-year hiatus. They point out that in addition to the three trips since January that Rice has already undertaken, a fourth is being planned for another meeting of the international Quartet to be held in Cairo in April. They don't naively believe that things will move quickly or decisively, but they see the next 6-8 months--until the American presidential primaries next winter--as an important opportnity to make some progress and reduce regional tensions. "The U.S. is grappling with ideas, but they have to overcome a lot of doubters," an Arab official tells me. "How many times have they come to the region and said 'We really want to push this' and nothing happens?" What might be different this time, Arabs are hoping, is that Bush needs a win in the Middle East for his "legacy."

--The Arabs don't have anything fresh to propose on the Palestinian issue in Aswan and at next week's Arab summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. They mainly intend to reiterate their past positions and encourage the U.S. and Israel to take the next step.

--The purpose of the Arab summit is to 1) reaffirm the 2002 Arab peace initiative, 2) come up with some ways of launching a new diplomatic campaign to push it and 3) to refuse any pressures to amend the proposal in accordance with Israeli concerns about the right of Palestinian refugees to return to homes in Israel. The Arabs feel they have a good proposal on the table and now it is up to Israel to decide whether it wants to negotiate a peace deal on that basis. "There will be no changes," an Arab official tells me. "You can't change something that is already on the table. Now the other guy [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert] has to come and discuss it."

--The Arabs are standing by the Mecca agreement that created a Palestinian national unity government as a major step forward providing a formula by which Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas can engage Olmert on a final peace deal. "By getting Hamas into this government, we are luring Hamas gradually into the peace camp," an Arab official tells me. "There is no love for Hamas, but the reality is they cannot be wished away. You can't use all stick and no carrot." The Arabs are trying to persuade Rice and Olmert that they should drop the focus on security (that Hamas has to cease being a terrorist group and meet Quartet conditions such as recognizing Israel and stopping violence) and focus on politics (that Hamas has started to inch away from its maximalist positions by virtue of cohabitation with Fatah, which signed peace deals with Israel in the past). Arab diplomats argue that this trend must be encouraged and could ultimately produce an agreement that is sanctioned by Hamas. They also believe that this trend will strengthen Abbas, who Israel and the U.S. see as a partner for peace. On the other hand, they say, continuing to insist on the Quartet conditions is a non-starter: Hamas will never accept them, and any move by Abbas to crush Hamas will rather lead to more Hamas atacks on Israel and the collapse of any peace talks.

--The Arabs well understand that Olmert is politically weak, but argue that making a bold peace move on the basis of the Arab peace initiative is the way he can revive his political fortunes. They are heartened by Olmert's repeated references to the Arab peace initiative, but they are fearful that he may be talking about peace only as a way of outflanking internal rivals rather than actually reaching out to the Palestinians and Arabs.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo