Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Abbas (left) and Olmert both met with President Bush at the White HOuse today in anticipation of this meeting.

But across da sea…Da Munchkin King publicly lambasted his lapdog Syria over that country’s decision to attend the conference.

Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas described the Annapolis peace conference as a betrayal of Palestinian demands.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came out Sunday against the decision by the Arab League — including Tehran’s ally Syria — to attend the Israeli-Palestinian peace conference in the Maryland capital.

“Those attending the meeting and giving concessions to the Zionist occupiers will not be remembered in history with good reputation,” the official Iranian news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying. He added that Annapolis would harm Palestinian “rights.”

Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip — Iranian proxies sworn to the Jewish state’s destruction — echoed the charge. Hamas said it was “shocked” that nations such as Saudi Arabia would attend a meeting under U.S. auspices that would mean de facto normalization with Israel.

“What we have here is a cross-section of the Arab world,” Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said upon arriving in Washington on Sunday. “The moderates are attending, while the radicals are on the outside hoping to ruin it.”

(JTA)

And from Fox:

Perhaps the most important development we’ll see from this Israeli-Palestinian peace conference being held in Annapolis, Md., happened before the conference started. It came from Syria. The announcement that Syria planned to send a representative shows the nation is willing to break step with its only strong ally, Iran.

Standing with the Arab League and the Arab nations that have elected to attend, Syria lends credibility to the outcome as well as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah Party. The decision puts Syria on the side of the moderates and leaves Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran out in the cold, denouncing the conference.

The outcome itself will not be dramatic. The goal at the end of the conference is a joint declaration from Israelis and Palestinians — a piece of paper, not peace.

Everyone talks about the two-state solution. However, as the facts stand today, a Palestinian state is not an attainable goal. The Palestinian territories are divided between the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip and the West Bank, where Abbas’ Fatah party maintains a weak hold.

The West Bank is so dotted with Israeli settlements, the map doesn’t even look like Swiss cheese; it looks like blue cheese. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is still too weak politically to pull out from the West Bank. Considering the last pullout left the world with a Hamas-controlled Gaza strip, where a kidnapped Israeli soldier still resides and from which Qassam rockets fly every day, Olmert is not going to attempt a West Bank pullout anytime soon.

Politicians could spend the whole conference talking about a Palestinian state, but no one could draw even a hypothetical one on a map.

What you need to watch during the conference is this rhetorical question: How far will Olmert go?