But before anyone is tempted to drink a toast to this potentially historic turning point, the draft memorandum goes into no details on the core issues of the dispute and has some razor-sharp strings attached: the activation of any eventual peace deal would be contingent on implementation of the defunct road map and any peace agreement would be implemented by the parties of the road map, effectively excluding Hamas.

The paralysed road map — which was supposed to deliver a Palestinian state by 2005 — has gone absolutely nowhere since it was launched in 2004. In fact, if anything, the situation has gone rapidly downhill, meanwhile.

This is the same road map that gives clear and precise coordinates for where the Palestinians need to be but only suggests to the Israelis the approximate neighbourhood they ought to reach, if they feel like it. This is also the same unambitious road map whose four principal international sponsors — the USA, the EU, Russia and the UN — have stood by the wayside and watched this “confidence-building” plan crash and burn.

As for the actual parties to the conflict, the Israeli political landscape is fractured and polarised, leaving the scene wide open for the extremists to continue full-throttle in their bid to annex large segments of the West Bank and effectively encircle the Palestinians living there.

As for the Palestinians, they are divided and weak, whether in the Fatah-controlled West Bank or in Hamas-controlled Gaza — they are an “authority without authority”. And the chance to moderate the extremists has pretty much slipped away with the Israeli and international stranglehold on the Palestinians gradually radicalising even the unradicalised.

So, if not Annapolis, then what? It’s quite simple: let the people decide. The way forward would be for the Israeli and Palestinian leadership to admit that they do not possess the mandate to reach a feasible two-state solution.
In order to acquire the necessary mandate and sideline the extremists, they should declare that, since the peace process affects everyone, then everyone should be involved. The first step down this road would be for the international community to help the two sides host a “people’s peace conference” on neutral territory.

If Annapolis fails, the Palestinians should agree among themselves to abandon their struggle for statehood and transform it into a non-violent civil rights movement in which they demand equal civil and legal status and full Israeli citizenship.

Such a move would certainly focus Israeli minds on the consequences of the course they are steering towards disaster. If they want to hold on to the overwhelming Jewish identity of their state, then they need to end the occupation and dispel the mounting tension. If not, then they are obliged to grant the Palestinians over which they rule their rights and admit that their country is a complex, multi-confessional and multiethnic society.

Guardian