You can save yourselves the price of a ticket. Nothing is likely to happen in Annapolis. There may not even be a meeting.
The latest sign of implacable disagreement came from ranking Palestinians who assert that the Right of Return remains a cardinal plank in their demands, bolstered by a number of United Nations resolutions from 1948 onward.
We have tried to explain to the Palestinians that their homes no longer exist. They have been plowed under the forests, or built upon by Israeli neighborhoods. The descendants of Jews who lived in Jerusalem prior to the Roman onslaught of 70 CE have about the same chance of returning to their homes.
We have also tried to explain to the Palestinians that we are doing them a favor by not agreeing to their right of return. Imaging the scene of lots of grandpa's descendants, three or four generations removed from his departure, who claim priority rights to what they say was his parcel. Some will be loyal to Fatah, some to Hamas, and some to other movements. All will be armed, and not inclined to share the hundred or so square meters at stake.
Israelis have said until they are blue in the face that the key resolutions cited by Palestinians and their friends came out of the General Assembly. According to the United Nations own rules, they are not binding. They are no more a matter of "international law" than resolutions of the United States Congress, or part of it, that the Turks committed a Holocaust against the Armenians in 1915-16. Such resolutions satisfy some people and infuriate others, but do little to remake history.
This is not the only indication of Arab unreality in recent days. Another appears in al-Jazeera, usually a reliable media, that it was American planes that attacked a Syrian nuclear site last month, and that they destroyed it with nuclear missiles.
The al-Jazeera story sounds like questions that I once received when lecturing in a Muslim country: How do you explain why Americans piloted the planes that destroyed Arab air forces in 1967?
I do not know what happened in Syria. However, I suspect that then, as in 1967, Israeli pilots could press the right buttons. I doubt that the United States would want to open another front against another Muslim country, when is it busy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there are juicier targets in Iran.
It is even more far fetched to claim that nuclear weapons were used to destroy the Syrian site. It would have been the first use of nuclear weapons in hostilities since 1945. Many governments would have known very quickly, and stood on their hind legs in protest.
The Israeli government will, in all probability, send a delegation to Annapolis. The President of the United States wants it too much for an Israeli politician to say it is not worth the plane fare. The rest of us can relax, go for a walk, or do something else that is pleasant instead of waiting with anticipation for news of the conference outcome.