November 30, 2007 | By Nathaniel Ward

Any chance for peace in Israel?

Meeting in Annapolis this week, Israeli and Palestinian leaders pledged to reach an enduring peace accord by the end of next year.

But there’s reason to be skeptical that such an agreement will come to pass. “The continuing threat posed by Hamas, backed by Iran and Syria,” writes Heritage Middle East expert James Phillips, “makes a sustainable peace agreement unattainable for the foreseeable future.”

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Instead of advancing “overly ambitious efforts to quickly resolve” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Phillips proposes that the Bush administration instead seek “realistic step-by-step negotiations.”

Unfortunately, the Annapolis conference may be part of a rushed peace process, Heritage foreign policy expert Helle Dale argues. “While it may be harsh to compare Mr. Bush’s Annapolis initiative to President Clinton’s failed Middle East diplomacy at the Wye River Plantation, the comparison is justified,” she writes.

“There is no more reason to expect long-term success from Annapolis than there was from the Wye River conference, given the difficulties of the issues and the haste with which the summit was cobbled together after a long series of delays.”

But there is a bright side to these modest negotiations, which Heritage’s Peter Brookes outlines in The New York Post. “This week’s meeting is likely to restart a negotiation process that has been moribund for seven years.”

“Just getting more than 100 key players in the same room at the same time to talk peace is a real achievement,” he continues. Representatives of all the major Middle East players—from Israel to Saudi Arabia to Russia—participated in the conference.

Dale concludes her analysis with some sound advice for the White House. “It would be far better for the president in his last year in office to focus on the most important task at hand, and that is getting Iraq right.”

Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.