The emperor's new peace plan

The key player here is Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel or forswear violence but serves as the elected representative of the Palestinian people, controls the Gaza Strip, and still has many supporters in the West Bank. Levy argues that simple realism dictates that Hamas needs to be part of the peace process. Bush's "extremists vs. moderates" framework, which requires that Hamas be destroyed or magically disappear, is a recipe for disaster -- because Hamas is not going to do either.

"If the process is about creating a sustainable two-state solution, then Hamas is a factor in that," Levy said. "There's a misguided tendency to think that a two-state solution, even a realistic one, is all gain and no pain for the Palestinians. But even the most realistic, decent two-state solution is going to require hard swallows on both sides, including the Palestinian. Now, in the case of Annapolis, if you have to try to implement that plan and gain broad enough legitimacy and acceptance on the Palestinian side, you're not only coming up against a substantive, content-induced pushback, which you might just be able to deal with, but you're also coming up against a pushback because you're doing it in a political context that's all about driving Hamas out of Palestine. And I think you can almost guarantee that this is not going to be able to hold. Asking Hamas supporters to sign on to the destruction of their movement is probably unreasonable."

Levy said that despite their use of terrorism, it was possible to deal with Hamas. "There's a degree of realism and pragmatism that I think one can appeal to in Hamas," he said. "But they're not going to do the full Monty in advance. Because they look back at this process and say, Fatah gave all the recognitions Israel demanded and there's still the occupation."

Although a remote possibility at best, it's worth trying to imagine how a successful post-Annapolis process could play out. But as you plot out possible successful scenarios for peace, you come up against the same problem: Without aggressive U.S. involvement, success is almost inconceivable.

If Israel and the Palestinians make peace, the key player is likely to be not George W. Bush, but Ehud Olmert. To his credit, Olmert has acknowledged that Israel must leave the territory it captured in the 1967 war if it is to survive. In a post-Annapolis interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Olmert said, "If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished. The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us, because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents."

Most observers believe that Olmert sincerely believes this and genuinely wants to make peace with the Palestinians. Aluf Benn, Ha'aretz's diplomatic correspondent and a contributor to Salon, said in response to an e-mail inquiry that "Olmert has been preaching these ideas since late 2003, when he was Sharon's deputy PM and 'came out of the closet' upon hearing hints of Sharon's change of heart over the settlements." Benn notes that before the 2006 election, Olmert proposed a plan to "remove most West Bank settlements and withdraw unilaterally to behind the barrier," but rocket attacks from Gaza and the Lebanon war forced him to abandon it. "Most Israelis now believe that withdrawal from any area will only create another terrorist haven and rocket launching pad," Benn wrote. "Hence there is no real ability to cede military control over the West Bank, and [Olmert has adopted] the compromise idea of 'agreement in principle,' whose implementation would have to wait until security is better."

The key questions, of course, are how far Olmert will go, and whether he will be willing to make bold moves in the absence of a cease-fire. Let's indulge ourselves in the best-case scenario. Olmert manages to push through substantive measures -- he freezes settlement building, dismantles outposts, opens roads, opens the cash spigot -- that immediately make a difference in the lives of Palestinians on the West Bank. Hamas grumbles and continues to fire its Qassam rockets at Sderot, but fortunately no one is killed; the Israeli Defense Forces don't invade Gaza, and a Palestinian civil war does not break out. A revived Palestinian Authority, which has delivered for its people, gains power, and Hamas dwindles. Final-status issues go on the table, and (now we're really smoking the optimism pipe) the two sides manage to hammer out an agreement. Most Hamas members and far-right Jewish settlers come on board; the violent rejectionists are arrested. Peace breaks out. Palestinians worship freely at the al-Aqsa Mosque, a few hundred yards from Jews praying at the Western Wall. A jointly produced Israeli-Palestinian olive oil becomes the biggest seller in the world and is found on every trendy restaurant table in New York and Berkeley. George W. Bush has achieved the Holy Grail of American diplomacy and receives the Nobel Peace Prize.

And I'm the Buddha. Alas, there are huge obstacles in the way of this happy scenario, and the Israeli ones are as formidable as the Palestinian ones. Olmert is politically weak (although Benn notes that he is extraordinarily politically skilled) and faces unrelenting domestic opposition on all final-status issues. Under these circumstances, the deeply entrenched status quo is likely to prevail -- which will mean an end to the peace process. As Benn notes, "For Israel, the most convenient situation is entering a peace process (no external pressure) and not implementing anything (no domestic rift). This is where we are today. Is it sustainable and for how long? -- this is the $64,000 question."

The status quo may well be sustainable for Israelis for some time: The security wall protects them from Palestinian suicide bombers, the agony in the gigantic open-air prison called Gaza is unseen, Bush will not pressure them to take more than small, cosmetic steps, and they can count on Hamas or dissident elements in Fatah to bail them out by engaging in terror attacks. But at what price?

As Olmert (and Jimmy Carter, who was reviled as an anti-Semite for saying essentially the same thing Olmert did) pointed out, the Israeli occupation creates a ticking demographic time bomb whose result, if Israel is to remain a Jewish state, will be some form of more or less explicit apartheid. Neither America nor the world will indefinitely put up with this. And the inner destruction wrought by the occupation is just as deadly as the outer. As two of Israel's greatest writers, Amos Oz and David Grossman, have eloquently argued, the occupation of Palestinian land is a moral cancer eating away at Israel's soul.

Israel thus finds itself in a peculiar, almost drugged situation. As Benn noted in a recent piece in Salon, the occupation, and indeed Palestinians themselves, are invisible to most Israelis. The status quo seems fine. But below the surface, huge historic trends and forces are working against Israel. As radical Islam rises, the Holocaust recedes, and American Jews continue to assimilate and lose connection to the Jewish state, Israeli exceptionalism will come to acquire more of a negative than a positive connotation. And at the most basic level, no state wants to remain locked in endless hostility with all of its neighbors.

At this strange, quietly dangerous moment, Israel needs someone to save it from itself -- and only America can play that role. Only America can give Olmert, or his successor, the political cover to negotiate an end to the occupation. But Bush is incapable of seeing what needs to be done. In one of those ironic reversals that haunt the Holy Land, the most pro-Israeli president in U.S. history may be remembered as Israel's worst enemy.

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