Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas speaks at the Middle East Peace Conference at the U. S Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland on November 27, 2007
He scored his biggest political success since succeeding the late Yasser Arafat in 2004. Annapolis was crucial to Abbas's survival. Due to frustration over the lack of results in past peace efforts, Abbas lost control over much of his own Fatah group and then took a drubbing at the hands of the fundamentalist Hamas group in last year's parliamentary elections — then, last spring, Hamas seized military control of Gaza. Abbas could be rescued only by a serious revival of the peace process. He has now been offered a lifeline in the form of a one-year window — and unprecedented international support — to achieve a viable Palestinian state through negotiations. Abbas's good intentions are not in question; but his political staying power will remain so.