Besides an Iranian bomb, the greatest threat to Israel’s existence is diminished support from its long-time ally, the United States. Whatever the outcome of Annapolis, the months prior to the conference have already revealed a dangerous erosion of U.S. support for Israel.

After working with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak throughout the year 2000 to put together a stunning package of concessions for the Palestinians in their quest for statehood, President Clinton concluded the offer by insisting to Yasser Arafat that “These are my ideas. If they are not accepted, they are not just off the table, they also go with me when I leave office.”

Soon after Arafat rejected the unprecedented offer, George W. Bush was sworn in as America’s 43rd president. The Bush administration immediately set out to distance itself from President Clinton’s policy for peace in the Middle East. As explained in U.S.News & World Report, “The administration made clear that President Clinton’s far-reaching Camp David peace proposals are now off the table. Powell said the United States is ready to join in future talks, but he also signaled a less frenetic style of peacemaking than had prevailed under Clinton. There would be no ‘talks for the sake of talks.’ He also wants aides to avoid the open-ended-sounding phrase ‘peace process.’ ‘We don’t have a peace process right now,’ reasons a senior State Department official. ‘Nobody is going to jump in where Bill Clinton left off’” (Feb. 19, 2001).

A year and a half into his presidency, Mr. Bush revealed his vision for peace between Jews and Palestinians—“two states, living side by side in peace and security” (June 24, 2002). He called for a new leader to govern the Palestinians. “Today, the elected Palestinian legislature has no authority, and power is concentrated in the hands of an unaccountable few. … Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing, terrorism,” President Bush said, referring to Arafat’s administration. “This is unacceptable. And the United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure.”

After these conditions were met, the president then called on the Israelis to withdraw “to secure and recognized borders.”

Less than a year later, after Israelis voted Ariel Sharon into office, President Bush elaborated further on his “road map” for peace in the Middle East. He said, “The Palestinian state must be a reformed and peaceful and democratic state that abandons forever the use of terror” (March 14, 2003).

A year later, President Bush welcomed Sharon’s disengagement plan for Gaza, calling it “real progress” that would contribute “toward peace.” He then wrote a personal letter to Ariel Sharon on April 14, 2004, in which he said (emphasis mine),

Palestinians must undertake an immediate cessation of armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere, and all official Palestinian institutions must end incitement against Israel. The Palestinian leadership must act decisively against terror, including sustained, targeted, and effective operations to stop terrorism and dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure. …The United States reiterates its steadfast commitment to Israel’s security, including secure, defensible borders, and to preserve and strengthen Israel’s capability to deter and defend itself, by itself, against any threat or possible combination of threats. …As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders …. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.

Since President Bush wrote that letter, the situation on the ground has been jolted by one dramatic upheaval after another. Israel pulled out of Gaza, Sharon suffered a debilitating stroke, Hamas celebrated a stunning victory during 2006 elections and then, earlier this year, gained control of Gaza from Fatah in a violent overthrow. Today, there are essentially two Palestinian entities Israel must deal with.

President Bush has responded to the turmoil by shunning Hamas, propping up a severely weakened and intrinsically corrupt Fatah and intensely pressuring a worn-out, “we’re tired of fighting” Israeli government. In July, President Bush called for an international meeting of “representatives from nations that support a two-state solution, reject violence, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and commit to all previous agreements between the parties.” That meeting is taking place today in Annapolis, Maryland.

Dore Gold recently wrote an excellent paper on how the purpose for the Annapolis meeting has changed since Mr. Bush conceived of the idea four months ago:

The focus of diplomacy shifted to the issuance of an agreed Joint Statement by Israel and the Palestinians that would begin to outline, in greater detail than before, the contours of a future Palestinian state by detailing aspects of its borders, the nature of a solution to the Jerusalem issue, and the future of Palestinian refugees. Perhaps it was thought that dramatic Israeli concessions in the Joint Statement would induce pro-Western Arab states, like Saudi Arabia, to attend the planned peace conference even at the level of foreign minister. What would follow the peace conference would be intense, bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians based on the Joint Statement so that the foundations of a Palestinian state could be established within a little over a year.This newer and more ambitious agenda for Annapolis has run into serious problems on the eve of the meeting. First, from drafts of the Joint Statement that were leaked to Ha’aretz, it is clear that the Palestinians are only willing to talk about “the two-state solution,” but refuse to adopt proposed Israeli language that would add that Israel is the “homeland for the Jewish people and Palestine is the homeland for the Palestinian people.” Second, it also appears that the idea of detailing the parameters of a peace settlement by touching on the most contentious “core issues” of Jerusalem, borders, security and refugees has been dropped entirely. Clearly, the diplomatic gaps between the parties on these critical issues were unbridgeable at this time.

In the Jerusalem Post,Caroline Glick makes similar comments about how sharp the differences are between Israel and the Palestinians, based on the drafts of the Joint Statement. Of much greater concern, though, is the deepening division she exposes between the U.S. and Israel:

The draft document shows that the Palestinians and the Israelis differ not only on every issue, but differ on the purpose of the document. It also shows that the U.S. firmly backs the Palestinians against Israel.As the draft document makes clear, Israel is trying to avoid committing itself to anything at Annapolis. For their part, the Palestinians are trying to force Israel’s hand by tying it to diplomatic formulas that presuppose an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines and an Israeli acceptance of the so-called “right of return,” or free immigration of foreign Arabs to Israel. …As the leaked draft document shows, the Americans have sided with the Palestinians against Israel. Specifically, the Americans have taken for themselves the sole right to judge whether or not the Palestinians and the Israelis are abiding by their commitments and whether and at what pace the negotiations will proceed.But the Americans have shown themselves to be unworthy of Israel’s trust. By refusing to acknowledge Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party’s direct involvement in terrorism and indeed the direct involvement of his official Fatah “security forces” in terrorism, the Americans have shown that their benchmarks for Palestinian compliance with their commitments to Israel are not necessarily based on the reality on the ground. Then too, the U.S. demands for wide-ranging Israeli security concessions to the Palestinians even before the “peace” conference at Annapolis have shown that Israel’s security is of little concern to the State Department.

We are witnessing a remarkable transformation in America’s policy for peace in the Middle East.

Mahmoud Abbas is no longer responsible for dismantling the infrastructure of terror in the West Bank and Gaza. And Israel is no longer entitled to secure and defensible borders.

Regarding Condoleezza Rice’s recent comments about “most Israelis” being ready to leave the West Bank for the sake of “peace,” just as they did in Gaza, Dore Gold writes,

It is doubtful that Rice was reflecting on the results of any serious Israeli public opinion poll, which actually show strong Israeli support for retaining strategic areas of the West Bank, like the Jordan Valley. And given Israel’s bitter experience from unilaterally leaving the Gaza Strip, it is difficult to draw analogies from Israeli positions on Gaza prior to the August 2005 disengagement and Israeli positions, at present, toward withdrawal from the West Bank. It is likely that she carefully chose her language as a trial balloon, couching a new possible U.S. position on borders as a general statement about Israeli public opinion.Having decided to convene the Annapolis meeting, the Bush administration is under enormous pressure to make sure it succeeds. The situation that has been created provides the Arab states with enormous leverage over Washington to revise its positions on the core issues in order to obtain their attendance at a high enough level.

By all accounts, it looks like the Bush administration is prepared to significantly alter its previous conditions for Palestinian statehood. President Bush has not only put President Clinton’s offer back on the table, he’s sweetening the deal. Through it all, Israel has been forced to go along, as Glick notes, because President Bush is facing “the weakest Israeli leaders the country has ever produced.”

This weakness of will is manifestly evident in American leadership too.

The strain on U.S.-Israeli relations has never been greater. This cannot bode well for Israel’s immediate future—or America’s.

To understand why this is happening and the truly exciting outcome it will eventually result in, request a copy of The United States and Britain in Prophecy.