The Israeli government is reportedly moving into high gear with regard to the planned “agreement of principles” with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Perhaps Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is doing this to appease the United States which is sponsoring the international conference on Middle East peace, or possibly for reasons of his own political survival.

When then Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon declared his plan to disengage from Gaza Strip in 2005, he received favorable media coverage, his corruption files in the State Prosecutor’s Office were closed and he achieved a coalition with the Labor Party. Olmert is trying to follow in his footsteps; Sharon was safeguarded by the media from all harm because of the disengagement. But in Olmert’s case it’s all talk: He is weak, so is Abbas, and even if the two manage to reach an agreement, it will be worthless.

With regard to Olmert’s “kitchen Cabinet”, there’s seemingly a degree of disharmony between the parties involved, possibly reflecting the manner in which the entire government functions: Vice Premier Haim Ramon is acting “with the prime minister’s permission, yet without authority,” and offers his interlocutors a “document of principles”; the prime minister’s associates are talking about a “document of understandings”; Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni continues to search for a “political horizon,” and the “nonpolitical” President Shimon Peres advances his own plans.

Israeli analysts say that it’s fortunate that Olmert has a political interest in holding talks with Abbas; otherwise he would not be doing so. According to them, if Olmert believed that the talks are damaging his status among Israelis, he would have stuck with the diplomatic freeze and with the claim that “there’s no Palestinian partner.”

But Olmert’s problem is that neither his decision to hold talks with Abbas, nor his agreement to discuss the “core issues” — permanent borders of a future Palestinian state, Jerusalem and the refugees — is sufficient. Even if he arrives at the Washington summit without any additional bombing attacks by Palestinian armed groups being perpetrated until then and reaches a reasonable agreement of principles with Abbas, the path he has chosen leads through dangerous minefields.

The first is the vague definition of the negotiations’ aims. When Olmert came to power in 2006, he presented his “Convergence Plan”: To leave the Palestinian territories in order to preserve Israel’s Jewish majority. Now he is avoiding such declarations. He says that his talks with Abbas and the planned meeting in Washington merely constitute a preamble to additional, more detailed negotiations about the two-state solution.

Such talk arouses suspicions that Olmert has no clear plan for the day after the summit in November. The danger is that on the day following the widely publicized event and the friendly declarations and “show of support”, the talks will degenerate into depression and will have difficulty taking off amid the daily internal problems on both sides. The great expectations will turn into disappointments, and once again it will be shown that there is no one to talk to and nothing to talk about, and the danger of a third intifada will increase. The second minefield is Abbas’ weakness. The Palestinian leader and the government of his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad are afraid even to take responsibility for a few cities in the West Bank. How will he be able to build a state and enforce order and security? According to the vision of Olmert and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the agreement will present the Palestinians with a “diplomatic horizon,” and Abbas in turn will present it during elections and will win another mandate from the Palestinian public. But Abbas won the elections in the past as well — yet this did not make him a strong leader. Even if he convinces his electorate to support the agreement, he will have difficulty implementing it, and Hamas will be able to say: We told you so. Olmert fears that a “shelf agreement” with Abbas will only be the starting point for additional Israeli concessions to be realized.

The third minefield is the negotiators’ total lack of room to maneuver. In international opinion, the December 2000 Clinton plan for a final-status solution has become the reasonable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Olmert and Abbas cannot diverge from it, lest each of them be accused of making major concessions to the other side, and be removed from office. Since they cannot implement it either, their real efforts will be devoted to finding escape hatches and avoiding the truly difficult decisions. That is the background to Olmert’s attempts to reduce the agreement of principles to one page of a general summary and to his announcement that it would be implemented in line with the International Quartet’s road map; in other words, in long stages that are prone to obstacles and conflicts.

If Olmert wants his political interest to be translated into diplomatic advantage, he has to think carefully about the day after the summit in Washington. He should ask Barak, who participated in the 2000 Camp David summit alongside US President Bill Clinton and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, what happens when the beautiful expectations are destroyed. A picture with a prominent personality from an Arab country which has no diplomatic relations with Israel would be a nice diplomatic achievement for Olmert, but the results of his policy will be decided in the West Bank and in Gaza, and not on the lawn in Washington.