Palestinian, American and Israeli leaders held a tri-lateral summit in Jerusalem this week, but failed to make any real progress. (Maan Images)

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will meet today [19 February] with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Ostensibly, they are to talk of a "political horizon" in order for Abbas to relay to the Palestinian people a "vision" of what could be.

This now appears to be little more than a hallucination put out for public consumption. Borders, Jerusalem, and Palestinian refugees cannot be expected to highlight the agenda. Consequently, if these three issues are not central to discussions, this is not a political horizon but a cliff for Palestinians. A horizon, properly viewed, simply cannot omit these three central concerns.

The mini-summit can be expected to focus instead on Abbas's decision to join Hamas in stopping Palestinian bloodletting by agreeing to a unity government. American officials are vexed by Abbas's decision. Former Middle East Envoy Dennis Ross, now with the conservative Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), described the deal as a trap for Rice ahead of her talks with Olmert and Abbas.

Only one ideologically obsessed could reason that internal Palestinian peacemaking is part of an elaborate Palestinian scheme to put Rice in a tight spot with the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the Saudis, whose support the Bush administration desperately seeks to shore up the deteriorating conditions in Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon.

As a result of the Mecca agreement, American officials are now treading water, waiting to see what positions the unity government takes. Namely, will it recognize Israel, renounce violence, and accept previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements? This is the threesome that newspapers across the land repeat like a mantra as if all demands for peacemaking should be directed exclusively at the Palestinians.

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If Hamas will not accept the three demands, the United States seems certain to continue inflicting sanctions on the Palestinian people in conjunction with Israel and possibly the Quartet. Russia, however, may jump ship and the European Union faces increasing questions as to why it is causing hardship for the occupied rather than the occupier.

Indeed, it is long past time for hard questions of the Quartet. One can hope that before long Hamas will recognize Israel, renounce violence, and abide by previous agreements, and yet find it shocking that commensurate demands are not made of Israel as its occupation of the Palestinians fast approaches 40 years.

For example, if Hamas is expected to recognize Israel, why is Israel not similarly expected to address the ethnic cleansing of some 700,000 Palestinians that occurred at the time of Israel's founding?

But, of course, polite society inside the Washington Beltway is scarcely even aware of Palestinian rights and claims, while those outside that loop have systematically been kept uninformed. Palestinians are more forthright about the rights of the refugees, yet their entirely fair demands on this front are rarely heard.

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