2007 was another eventful year in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with Hamas taking over the Gaza Strip and the U.S. sponsoring the Annapolis peace conference. But what will be most remembered in 2007 is not what happened but what did not happen.
For one thing, with the exception of a bombing in the resort city of Eilat in January, there were no suicide attacks in Israel in 2007. However, near daily Qassam rockets shot from Gaza onto towns in the south, and a potential Iranian nuke are, for now, a more immediate threat to Israelis' safety.
But 2007 was also a year of missed opportunities: Hamas' takeover of Gaza in June could have acted as a jumpstart to the peace process, as Israel and the Palestinian Authority come to the realization that they are on the same side; Israel's traumatic pseudo-defeat at the hands of the Hezbollah the year before could have made its leaders realize that they can ill-afford to have another Iran-backed Islamic militia controlling things in their own backyard.
On the other hand, the Palestinian Authority could have taken advantage of the Gaza-West Bank split to begin to install a transparent political, economic and government apparatus; The United States could have forced the Israeli government to go through with its five-year-old promise to dismantle illegal outposts and freeze the building of settlements.
Why did none of these things occur? Why did Annapolis become a summit dominated by warm handshakes for the camera and heartfelt speeches for the crowd rather than concrete results for the betterment of ordinary Israelis and Palestinians? Why have no settlements been evacuated? Why is corruption still rampant in the Palestinian Authority?
For answers to these questions one needs only to look at the leadership troika of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and U.S. President George Bush. All three of these men are at relatively weak points in their political careers.
Olmert, despite his uncanny ability for staying in power, is disliked by a large percentage of Israelis due to his mishandling of the Second Lebanon War. His popularity in 2007 decrease further with the release of a damning report by the Winograd Commission of Inquiry.
Mahmoud Abbas is seen by many Palestinians as a puppet of the West who lacks the powerful persona of Yasser Arafat to lead the establishment of a Palestinians state. George Bush is a second-term president with record low approval ratings who has sunk so deep in the Iraqi mud that he has no way of getting out of it.
With these men at the helm, 2007 never stood a chance. From this perspective, Annapolis was as much about bolstering domestic political standing as it was about breathing life into the peace process.
But the weakness of these leaders also explains the fatal importance of 2008, which seems more and more likely to be an election year not only in the United States but in the Israel and the Palestinian Authority as well.
Changing of the Guard
Of these three entities, Israel's elections are likely to be the soonest, though this ultimately depends on Defense Minister and Labor party leader Ehud Barak. If he decides to keep a promise he made to leave the government when the final report of the Winograd Committee is released in two weeks time, Olmert's coalition will disintegrate and Israel could hold elections as early as March.
But the wrench in Barak's original plan is that for now Likud party leader Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu has a serious lead over him in the polls, tempting Barak to bite the bullet and stick with Olmert for a while. All in all, though, it looks like Olmert's time as Prime Minister will come to an end in 2008. This will lead to a Bibi-Barak face-off and déjà-vu of the 1999 elections.
Elections in the Palestinian Authority are less certain and depend in part on whether Israel agrees to release Marwan Barghouti, a controversial Fatah leader serving five life terms in an Israeli prison for his leadership role in the second Intifada.
Unknown to many outside the region, he is a household name to both Palestinians and Israelis, the former viewing him as a "freedom fighter", the latter—as a man "with Israeli blood on his hands." He was a key potential successor to Arafat until he gave up the fight for the top position because of his sentencing.
While he has rejected the Oslo peace process, the BBC reported that he has spoken against suicide attacks on civilians inside Israel and counts left-wing Israelis among his friends. He also apparently speaks fluent English and Hebrew and helped negotiate from prison a temporary lull in violence in 2003.
His ability to do so was in large part due to the respect and authority he commands among the Palestinian public, something Abbas lacks in many regards. For this reason—and similar to how Arafat went from "terrorist" to "negotiation-partner" in the early 1990s—it is not entirely out of the question that Israel would release Barghouti.
This is especially feasible if Israel perceives that Abbas cannot deliver on security and that Barghouti is the only Fatah figure capable of pulling the support of Palestinians away from Hamas, including in Gaza.
Not surprisingly, such a decision by Israel in 2008 and beyond will likely be affected by whoever is voted into the White House on November 4. Given past experience, a Democrat president is more likely than a Republican to force Israel's hand on controversial issues. This includes dismantling illegal outposts and freezing settlements, a key confidence-building measure that a large numbers of Israelis would support and which could give a serious boost to the Annapolis process.
To sum up, 2008 will certainly end with a very different troika leading the region. If leaders committed to the peace process can receive the mandate from their people to proceed down the road of peace, 2008 and 2009 could be groundbreaking years. If not, there will be little to stop the bloodshed. For once, it appears that the fate of the Middle East may lie in the hands of the people.
The Fall of Hamastan?
One of the biggest stories of 2007 was undoubtedly the breakout of intra-Palestinian violence culminating in Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip in June. An equally big question for 2008 is how long Hamas' control over the territory will last.
With Islamic militants firing Qassam rockets from Gaza onto Israeli towns, regular arms being smuggled across the Egyptian border and Palestinians growing unhappy with Hamas' leadership, it is likely that "Hamastan" will meet its end in 2008. But how?
A more remote possibility is that following Barghouti's release, he is able to reach a truce with the Islamists, leading to elections in both the West Bank and Gaza in which he leads Fatah to victory, all the while guaranteeing Hamas leaders a limited number of government posts.
More likely is that Hamas will lose its hold on Gaza through an Israeli incursion, something whose chances are very high. To date, despite large numbers of Qassam rockets falling on Israeli towns, because of luck, fate or the rockets' inherently unreliable aim, few have led to injuries and even fewer to deaths.
But that could change in a heartbeat, tilting Israeli public opinion further in favor of paying the costs of a serious military operation. To put it more bluntly, if tomorrow a Qassam lands on a kindergarten and kills five kids, then Gaza will be invaded. And while Hamas ousted Fatah's security forces easily enough, the IDF is another story.
The Seven-Billion-Dollar Man
A potentially more positive development that squeezed into 2007 was the pledging of over $7 billion in aid to the Palestinians at a Paris conference in mid-December.
In the largest vote of confidence in the Palestinian Authority in over a decade, eighty-seven countries and international organizations promised to invest the funds over the next three years to rebuild the Palestinian economy and save Abbas' West Bank caretaker government from bankruptcy.
Whether the much-needed funds change the lives of ordinary Palestinians or are quietly funneled into off-shore bank accounts will be a key test for the Palestinian Authority leadership in 2008. But the man to watch for the result is not Abbas. It's his appointed Prime Minister and Finance Minister Salam Fayyad.
A pragmatist and former IMF official who earned his PhD in economics at the University of Texas in Austin, Fayyad played a key role in drawing the aid. His formal presentation to the delegates gathered in Paris about his plan for economic, institutional and security reform was central to their trusting the money would be well-spent.
But as someone who is not a member of Fatah and whose circle of supporters is relatively narrow, he might have trouble delivering the goods.
One thing is certain though, if his recovery plan really does lead to the five percent economic growth for the Palestinian economy that the World Bank has predicted, 2008 will go out with a much sweeter sounding note than it's come in on.
Ben Kohn lives in Israel and holds a BA in History and Economics from Tel Aviv University. Samantha Lev lives in New York and holds an MA in Middle East Politics from the School of Oriental and African studies.
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