Likudnik hawks work to undermine Annapolis

Jim Lobe, The Electronic Intifada, 22 November 2007

"WASHINGTON, Nov 21 (IPS) - Despite near-universal skepticism about the prospects for launching a serious, new Middle East peace process at next week's Israeli-Palestinian summit in Annapolis, a familiar clutch of neo-conservative hawks close to the Likud Party leader, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, isn't taking any chances.

Hard-liners associated with the American Enterprise Institute and Freedom's Watch, a bountifully funded campaign led by prominent backers of the Republican Jewish Coalition, among other like-minded groups, are mounting a concerted attack against next week's meeting which they fear could result in pressure on Israel to make territorial concessions.......

But such an effort is anathema to hard-line neo-conservatives whose presence in the Bush administration has dwindled steadily over the past two years, but who retain influence primarily through Vice President Dick Cheney and key members of the White House national security staff, notably Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams.

Indeed, among the most prominent hawks who have attacked the Annapolis meeting, to which senior officials and diplomats from 46 nations and multilateral groups have been invited, has been David Wurmser. Until August, Wurmser served as Cheney's main Middle East adviser. His opposition to the aborted Oslo peace process dates back to its very beginning in the early 1990s.

In a press luncheon sponsored by the hard-line Israel Project Monday, Wurmser, a former director of AEI's Middle East program, argued that the current moment was the worst time for the administration to initiate a new Israeli-Palestinian peace process.....

While Wurmser is perhaps the most recent administration alumnus to speak out against Annapolis, other hard-line neo-conservatives close to Netanyahu are also rallying against any serious peace effort.

Danielle Pletka, AEI's vice president for foreign and defense policy studies, published a column in the New York Times this week which accused the administration of aping the policies of former President Bill Clinton, particularly on North Korea and the Israeli-Palestinian process......Pletka, a protegee of neo-conservative impresario Richard Perle, was particularly scornful of Abbas.......

Meanwhile, the ultra-hawkish president of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), Frank Gaffney, also took out after Rice in a Washington Times column that derided the Annapolis meeting as "Condi's Folly,"......