Annapolis will prove that Oslo is dead.  The question for Israel is, "what next?"

In Israel, the Hebrew press is already into post-mortems about the amazing disappearing summit in Annapolis.  This was supposed to be the summit where Israel and the Palestinians agreed to divide Jerusalem and set up a Palestinian state.  Public opinion and (since the Lebanon war) its spokesman, Israel's right-wing opposition, put the heat on Shas and Avigdor Lieberman, and they put the heat on Olmert.  Olmert had to retreat and agree to turn the summit into fluff:  A solemn announcement of the two sides' determination to achieve, within a year, an agreement which neither is prepared to agree to now.  Meanwhile, it became clear that the Palestinians never had any intention of agreeing to anything but their most maximal demands.  Now, as the invitations are printed, it seems like there won't even be a joint statement, just a photo opportunity and eminently forgettable speeches.

At Annapolis, Olmert will go two steps further than Ariel Sharon did.  He will announce Israel's willingness to divide Jerusalem, and to negotiate a settlement before terror ends.  However, both statements will share the fate of Sharon's commitment to establish a Palestinian state:  They will fall stillborn from Olmert's lips, because the conditions that could make a Palestinian state, the division of Jerusalem, or the signing of a settlement at all possible will never be met.  As commitments they will be damaging enough, but one cannot foresee Israel actually implementing them.

It's time to leave off feverish speculation about Annapolis and consider, coolly and calmly, where we will be after Annapolis.  First we have to understand what happened.  Then we have to see what choices Israel faces.

Ehud Olmert is the most radical left-wing Prime Minister Israel has ever had, with the exception of Shimon Peres' brief stint in office in 1996.  He is willing to divide Jerusalem and multiply tenfold the human and political disaster created by the disengagement from Gaza and Northern Samaria.  In the absence of anything better, he is willing to take a powerless puppet like Abu Mazen and crown him "partner."  He is not going to succeed in doing any of this.  The reasons why are important.

What Olmert is trying to do at Annapolis, and what he will fail at, is to revive a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians as a live option.  Other than a few cronies in his government and the Israeli press, almost no Palestinians or Jews believe in this scenario.  Among the Palestinians, the only viable political force is Hamas and its allies, which want to destroy Israel and its Jews root and branch, not achieve a settlement with them.  Fatah and the Abu Mazen/Salam Fayyad cabal are moribund, and their incapacity to carry out any kind of agreement is common knowledge.  Among Israel's Jews, the Second Lebanon War and the subsequent takeover of Gaza by Hamas finally brought about the inevitable:  Deep awareness of how badly Israel has been hurt by Oslo, disengagement, and the flight from Lebanon, and deep skepticism about the possibility of a negotiated peace.  Don't get me wrong:  Most Jewish Israelis want peace, and would be willing to give up a lot in exchange for it.  It's just that they no longer believe in it, and have consigned the whole idea to the realm of political Messianism.  It's clear to everyone that any concessions in Judaea, Samaria and Jerusalem are going to wind up being a gift to Hamas and Iran.

These claims about the attitudes of Israel's Jews are based on in depth polls we conducted at the Israel Policy Center on the morrow of the Lebanon War and again toward the end of October 2007.  The Center's website is suspended pending elective surgery, so readers are invited to see a translation of the 2007 poll here, on Dr Aaron Lerner's website "IMRA."  The poll shows clearly that the Jewish public believes that Abu Mazen is a hollow shell, that Hamas will move into any vacuum the IDF leaves, and that those who oppose further disengagements outnumber those who want one by better than 3 to 1.

The Annapolis Conference will commit Israel, on the declaratory level, to a policy that cannot be carried out.  The situation will exhibit some odd characteristics.  Building in Judaea and Samaria will be frozen, because that is regarded as necessary for peace negotiations, but no meaningful negotiations will be going on.  Israel and the Palestinians in Judaea and Samaria will be locked in a conflict little less bitter than the hot war expected to break out in Gaza after Annapolis, and yet Israel will be incapable of doing anything about it because it will remain committed to a policy that it hasn't a prayer of implementing.  Israel will be deadlocked by its commitment to implementing a political daydream.   

Such commitments don't last.  Israel is going to need a whole new policy, a whole new direction, a whole new way of thinking about and resolving its conflict with malignant Palestinian hostility, one that does not involve making a settlement, evacuating territory, or setting up a Palestinian state, because that is clearly impossible.  The public is not going to allow its politicians just to sit on the problem forever without doing anything about it.  There's going to have to be a new approach, and whoever comes up with one that sounds reasonable is going to sweep the next elections.

From this perspective the most interesting element of our poll is a question we asked the public in 2006 and again in November 2007:  "Do you approve of Israel offering Palestinians in Judaea and Samaria reasonable compensation in return for emigrating to other lands?"  In 2006 a plurality of Israel's Jewish population, 48%, answered "yes" to this question.  In 2007 the majority has risen to 54%.