Palestinians walk past signs pointing to nearby Israeli settlements, as they approach the Yitzhar checkpoint, south of Nablus. (Michael Phillips, IMEU)

Almost immediately after the hollow show in Annapolis, a ray of hope has appeared from an unexpected source - Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert.

In an interview published on November 29 in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, he declared, "If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished."

This Ha'aretz article helpfully referred readers to a prior Ha'aretz article, published on March 13, 2003, in which Olmert had expressed the same concern in the following terms:

"More and more Palestinians are uninterested in a negotiated, two-state solution, because they want to change the essence of the conflict from an Algerian paradigm to a South African one. From a struggle against 'occupation', in their parlance, to a struggle for one-man-one-vote. That is, of course, a much cleaner struggle, a much more popular struggle - and ultimately a much more powerful one. For us, it would mean the end of the Jewish state."

Briefly, the Palestinian leadership appeared to have noticed Mr. Olmert's nightmare. On January 8, 2004, Ahmed Qurei (then the Palestinian prime minister and, more recently, the chief Palestinian negotiator in the run-up to Annapolis) declared that the wall being built through the West Bank represented an "apartheid solution" which would "put Palestinians like chickens in cages" and "kill the two-state solution" and concluded: "We will go for a one-state solution. There is no other solution." Three days later, he reaffirmed this position as he stood before the wall.

Unfortunately for the Palestinians and for the causes of justice and peace, there was no Palestinian follow-up. Now, almost four years later, Mr. Olmert has flung open the

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window of opportunity so wide and so publicly that it is barely conceivable that any Palestinian leadership could fail to notice and jump through it.

Throughout the long years of the perpetual "peace process", deadlines have been consistently and predictably missed. Such failures have been facilitated by the practical reality that, for Israel, "failure" has had no consequences other than a continuation of the status quo, which, for all Israeli governments, has been not only tolerable but preferable to any realistically realizable alternative.

For Israel, "failure" has always constituted "success", permitting it to continue confiscating Palestinian land, expanding its West Bank colonies, building Jews-only bypass roads and generally making the occupation even more permanent and irreversible.

In everyone's interests, this must change. For there to be any chance of success in the new round of negotiations, failure must have clear and compelling consequences which Israelis would find unappealing - indeed, at least initially, nightmarish.

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