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 We are closer to peace than ever before,” said Shimon Peres at his official presidential home in Jerusalem last week. “Still, we have to recognise many difficulties.” Over a conversation knitted with references to Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, Peres — the lone surviving member of the trio, along with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, that fetched the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 — was conspicuously confident in thinking forward to the outcome of the Middle East peace conference in Annapolis slated for November or December. “I imagine that a declaration of sorts will be issued. Real negotiations will be based on the declaration.”

Nonetheless, as Israel’s Ehud Olmert government and the West Bank-based, Fatah-led Palestinian Authority prepare for Annapolis, there is little consensus on what to even call the get-together, to be attended by a still uncertain supporting cast. Is it a peace summit, capable of delivering ‘final status’ talks, as the PA and the Arab countries overtly demand? Or is it a meeting to find a consensus strong enough to begin a process of talks, as Israeli leaders so obviously want? US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who shuttled around the region this fortnight, said at a press conference in Jerusalem that what she doesn’t want it to be is a mere photo-op.

However, talk of it being postponed has more or less evaporated in recent days. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, charged with preparing for Annapolis, is believed to have finalised her team. But there is still uncertainty about what issues Israel would be willing to have discussed at Annapolis.

Within the country, anxiety about the menu of subjects at Annapolis appears to unite two very different constituencies — those prepared to contemplate eventual concessions and those driven more by an ideological opposition to compromise. One is propelled by scepticism in the short term and the other, like the Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu parties in Olmert’s ruling coalition, is worried about the long-term commitments Israel could gain at Annapolis.

The sceptics ask, if Israel were to make concessions on any of the key Palestinian demands — the status of Jerusalem, the return of Palestinian refugees, Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the final borders of a future Palestinian state — would Fatah led by Abu Mazen be able to deliver its side of any deal?

Peres concedes that the failure of Yasser Arafat to deliver on the Oslo accord has left Israelis sceptical about the meeting. But: “You don’t look for the most popular solution but the most promising one.” He believes Abu Mazen, Arafat’s successor, is serious about peace.

It is very difficult, says Peres, to negotiate on behalf of a democratic country. He adds, be careful not to win too much, or you could lose your partner — lose too much, and you could lose your people.

There is, however, a sense among policymakers that Fatah led by Abu Mazen could be made a stronger — and thereby a more durable — negotiator by an Arab/Sunni world in alarm over the Iranian nuclear programme and the extremism shown in Hamas’s takeover of Gaza.

In a recurring imagery, they say, imagine a choice a Palestinian landing from outer space could face: a fully ‘liberated’ Gaza as it exists today under Hamas (Ariel Sharon’s government removed the last Israeli settlements in 2005), or a West Bank with its own cocktail of issues like disputed borders and degrees of prospects of future disengagement (with Israel) but in negotiation with Israel and recognised by a world community focused on encouraging investment in the territory. This is the imagery Israel would like its neighbours (‘the moderate Muslim countries’ is an explanatory phrase often used) to act upon.

But, in press reports and meetings with officials and opinion-makers, talk of the Annapolis meet comes couched in the wider regional implications of Iran’s nuclear programme. Taken as they see it, it makes sense of the confidence they appear to have that the Arab regimes will be more supportive of Abu Mazen’s possible peace efforts.

Eran Lerman, Israel head of American Jewish Committee, a thinktank that works closely with the Israeli government, says, “The strategic paradigm has been transformed in the region.” In his view, the Sunni regimes are as frightened of an Iranian bomb as Israel is. To supplement his point, he emphasises focus on what did not happen recently. “There was a certain air-raid (on Syria) on September 6.” It elicited “a deafening silence from what once used to called the Arab world.”

On Iran, Israel remains anxious about the matrix of other divisions within which it must manoeuvre. This week Prime Minister Olmert is in Paris and London, after rushing last week to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the immediate afterglow of his cordial visit to Tehran.

Here, Iran’s ‘imperial’ ambitions are seen to be overlaid by Russia’s reinvigorated rivalry with the US. Silvan Sahalom, a former foreign minister and now an opposition member of the Knesset, says, “Russia is trying to revive the Russian empire.” He worries it may see America’s enemy as its friend.

Olmert’s itinerary is seen to be a decisive leap out of what the liberal Haaretz newspaper called a walk between the raindrops. The big debate here is whether Jerusalem should tactically present the Iranian programme as the world’s problem — and thereby utter its fears for itself softly — or whether it should take a more strident lead in mobilising global action.

In the Israeli calendar, the Annapolis summit would be followed — in mid-2008 — by alarm bells. That is when, they say, their worst-case scenario would put Iran a year away from mastering the technology for a nuclear weapon programme. The stakeholders in the first engagement are among those being requested to commit to stronger deterrent measures — non-military, they say, for now — against Iran.

This is why, here in Israel, they say a failed ‘peace summit’ could take a toll beyond the individual fortunes of the two main participants.