Not much of a summit

What will be remembered from the fleeting meeting held Monday at the King David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, under the auspices of Condoleezza Rice, will primarily be the American attempt to get through the meeting as quickly and as elegantly as possible, while preventing the participants from engaging with the press.

Gone are the days of the merry summit meetings in Washington, Oslo and Sharm el-Sheikh, when delegation members mingled together, and heads of state delivered poetic speeches about peace and the dawn of a new Middle East that would inundate the Israelis and Palestinians with financial aid and other assistance that would flow in from the donating countries.

What took place in Jerusalem Monday was just a faint echo of former days: Olmert, Abbas and Rice sat around the hotel's round table. They shook hands for the cameras and then each in turn spoke about what irks them.

Abbas asked for another opportunity and Olmert responded that he was tired of the Palestinian leader's promises, including other blighted statements. At noon, after almost two hours of conversation on the 10th floor, Rice suddenly appeared before the press and read out a brief, laconic statement that had been agreed upon in advance. And that's it, the summit was over. Rice pledged to "return to the region soon," because according to her, this is what Bush expects of her.

Rice told a small group of American journalists who accompanied her on her current trip that after tough times we have to hope for better times. She said that as long as she was the secretary of state she intended to work hard, persevere, show patience and try to push the idea of founding a Palestinian state forward.

In other conversations she explained that the knowledge that the American Administration was spearheading the effort for renewal of talks between Israel and the Palestinians prevents the Europeans from proposing their own initiatives.

Future talks likely to be more complex

Rice also told a delegation of Knesset members, headed by Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik, that it was important for her to convene the meeting between Olmert and Abbas before the establishment of the Palestinian national unity government, for fear that future talks would be more complex.

She mentioned Ariel Sharon's Herzliya speech, where he spoke of a two-state solution. She said that when she first met Sharon, she could never have imagined him one day speaking of a two-state solution. Likud Knesset Member Gideon Saar, who participated in the meeting, sarcastically commented that even Sharon couldn't have imagined he would ever advocate a Palestinian state.

Nonetheless, Rice will continue Tuesday to her next stop - a meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan in Amman, after which she will participate in a Quartet meeting in Berlin.

Of what remains of the peace process with the Palestinians, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir would have said that once again Israel has emerged with the upper hand and it was saved from the danger of peace.