Ross said “we should not underestimate Saudi Arabia’s role in the upcoming international meeting on Middle East peace. Without their involvement, the international meeting is likely to look no different than previous meetings involving the Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians — meetings that have been held often and produced little.” “ ... This meeting, which President Bush announced with such fanfare, will not take care of itself. Secretary Rice must negotiate clear understandings in advance,” said Ross, stressing that “the details of the agenda must be worked out and not left to chance.”

With the date — though unset — rapidly approaching, the former Mideast peace negotiator stated the importance of all attendees to fully understand the terms of reference. “The steps that will follow the meeting must be agreed upon beforehand. None of this will be accomplished in a meeting or two ...,” said Ross. Ross concludes that the secretary of state “must engage in intensive statecraft if the upcoming November international meeting is to contribute to the president’s stated objective for it.” But the clock is ticking. As a point of reference Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is on her fifth trip to the region since June. Henry Kissinger, when he was the top US diplomat, undertook 36 visits to Damascus and an equal number to Israel in a single month in order to reach a breakthrough on the Golan.

Nikolas K Gvosdev, the editor of The National Interest wrote in his blog that Yossi Alpher, a former adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak “contends that what Ambassador Ross is advising happen with regard to Annapolis is not occurring.” This attempt at peace-making without proper preparation is described by Gvosdev as a “hail Mary” pass — a term used in American football when the ball is thrown for a long pass downfield with little chance of success — rather than a meeting with well-defined parameters. The real danger of a failed summit, say the experts, or a summit whose outcome delivers a weak resolution, or even a resolution which Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or President Bush find themselves unable to translate decisions taken in Annapolis into actions on the ground, will result in an acceleration of “negative dynamics in the region.”

In the meantime uncertainty continues to hang over the fate of the Middle East peace conference. With time rapidly running out for his administration, Bush, ironically, finds himself in a situation similar to that which befell president Bill Clinton during the waning days of his administration. Both presidents tried to resolve the 60-year-old Middle East dispute with too little time left on their White House clocks.

“You can’t create a viable Palestinian State by the end of this administration’s time,” said Robert Malley, Middle East and North Africa programme director with the International Crisis Group.

The mistake committed by Bill Clinton and which is about to be repeated by George W Bush derives from the fact of not allocating enough time to a very complicated procedure.

Clinton failed in his Middle East peacemaking efforts for basically two reasons. First was the lack of adequate preparation. But perhaps what contributed most to Clinton’s failure was the fact he chose to focus uniquely on a single aspect of a multifaceted problem.

Now, almost eight years later, the mistake committed by Clinton is about to be repeated by Bush, and that is in focusing exclusively on the Palestinian-Israeli aspect of the Middle East imbroglio, while sidelining other important issues and their stakeholders.

Omitting to take into account other regional players in the Middle East crisis is an invitation to failure.