Syria could attend an upcoming Middle East peace conference in Washington as part of an Arab League committee, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attends a Middle East "Quartet" briefing at the U.N. Sunday. Speaking after a meeting of the Mideast Quartet -- which includes the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia -- Rice said Arab League members charged with following up on a Saudi-backed peace proposal were likely to be invited to the November conference. Syria is a member of that follow-up committee.When we were taught Israeli-Arab Peace Process 101, it was an ironclad principle that Israel pushes for bilateral talks with each individual Arab enemy and the Arabs push for multilateral talks with Israel. Why? Because when the Arab states combine their "negotiating strength", they can make demands in unison: "hey Israel, you want this concession from the Palestinians? Well then you're also going to have to give back the Golan to Syria." Israel has to give something to every Arab state in order to get anything that it wants.
That's why the Saudis are already setting preconditions for their participation (nice to see major media outlets helping them out with that - teamwork). They understand that the State Department has maneuvered Olmert into an impossible situation, and they're ready to exploit it after three decades of Israel successfully resisting multilateral talks. Even Bush I and Baker, when they convened the multinational Madrid Conference, didn't successfully force Israel into large-scale multilateral peace negotiations.
[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]
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