Prime Minister Olmert said this yesterday:

 ”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.”

This is a real danger, and sometimes he really seems to recognize reality in a way most of his colleagues don’t.  The Israeli population, meanwhile, hardly ever seems to grasp this, and their ”supporters” in the United States often seem almost clinically unable to escape from denial.

But the question of whether Olmert can actually do anything with this wisdom is still an open one.  

Related:

• Why Palestine is a Part of the Zionist Dream

Today, after yesterday’s conference in Annapolis, Israel and Palestine wake up together, and look at each other and both think, “What have I done?”

And they have to make the walk of shame from Annapolis to the White House, all the while knowing that over 40 other countries saw all this happen yesterday.

Palestine is thinking, “What will Iran say?”

And Israel is thinking, “How am I going to explain this to my family?  She’s not even Jewish.”

(By the way, remember when they went on that blind date?) 

Why did it take Gawker to tell me that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had a blog?  I mean, him and I are practically Facebook best friends for life.  This is pretty damn awkward, I gotta say.

Down in Annapolis, things seem to be progressing swimmingly.  A joint statement read by President Bush and an agreement to conclude things by the end of 2008 — wrapping up the Middle East crisis in a neat little package.  Both delegations even arrived by helicopter, which didn’t seem all that necessary, given the one hour drive from DC — but it certainly added to the seeming gravitas of the occasion.

Notice that the joint statement didn’t even mention Jerusalem, which will prevent some of Olmert’s hardline cabinet allies from walking out on him.  Yet.  But to conclude things by 2009, that — and a lot of other tricky things — are going to have to come out into the open, and that’s going to set all the nutcase extremists packing.

Hopefully the center can hold.  I remain skeptical.

Image by Flickr user FreaksAnon used under a Creative Commons License.

Ami Ayalon, one of the Israeli government’s resident Tough Guy/silver-lining spotters, has a good piece in the Jerusalem Post today smacking down the “motley coalition of cynics and extremists [who] were quick to write off the Annapolis peace conference as a waste of time.”  You should read it.

I want to point out, though, that while I enjoy being part of motley coalitions (or motley anything, really), I don’t count myself as part of this coalition.  I think that what is going on today in Annapolis is absolutely crucial.  I am truly hoping for some kind of success, and as I’ve argued in this blog a few times, failure could be terrible.  I just think that, from a strictly odds-making point of view, it’s always better to bet on failure in Middle East peace negotations.  It’s usually a safe bet.

I have to admit that the guest list is pretty impressive for the Middle East conference that begins today in Annapolis — Syria, Saudi Arabia, and 41 other countries.  Prime Minister Olmert apparently said that he was only disappointed that Djibouti couldn’t make it.  But they’re not exactly crucial to this endeavor, so I think we can go on ahead without them.

And President Bush is set to make a speech setting out some real goals, and supposedly to use the full diplomatic force of the US to make some of them actually happen. 

I plan to do a lot of blogging about all this over the next two days, so check back often for your share of snide pessimism.

(I’ll get started on that front by alerting you to the fact that Hamas is having a “counter-conference” in Gaza today.  Less gabbing, more stabbing.  You can see it here.)