President Bush ensured yesterday that in at least one respect his peace conference in Annapolis was truly historic.

Standing on the podium with Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, on his right and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, on his left, the American leader locked arms with his guests in a triumphant gesture of unity. The leaders – each in their way domestically enfeebled – enjoyed for a few moments the admiration of their peers and the full attention of the world’s media.

Looking like overdressed trades union activists about to set off on an historic march, they even managed to look as though they believed that their impossible mission – to resolve all the intractable problems of the the Middle East conflict over the next year – might actually work.

The pose was no accident. The carefully choreographed handshake has become a crucial part of Middle East peacemaking, judged by some as important as inspired rhetoric, fine words or carefully drafted agreements.

The most famous handshake took place on the White House lawn in 1994, when Yitzhak Rabin, the late Israeli leader, reluctantly clasped the outstretched hand of Yassir Arafat, the PLO leader, after heavy cajoling from President Clinton.

More than anything else that day, the handshake came to symbolise the hopes for peace between the two warring peoples and won the two men Nobel Peace prizes.

After the event, Rabin revealed that he had decided only at the last moment to shake the hand of a man whom he had considered a terrorist.

White House officials also admitted that Mr Clinton feared that Arafat would go beyond shaking hands and ambush his host with one of his famous Palestinian bearhugs, often followed by a kiss on both cheeks.

To protect the President from a diplomatically awkward embrace, Mr Clinton trained with Tony Lake, his National Security Adviser, the night before on a protective double-handed shake. Arafat’s right hand would be warmly grasped by one presidential paw, but Mr Clinton’s left arm would grab the Palestinian’s right elbow, apparently in greeting but actually to force him to keep his distance.

The event was a resounding success and led the following year to the formal end of hostilities between Israel and Jordan and a warm handshake between King Hussein and Rabin.

The men were following in the footsteps of the real handshake pioneers, Jimmy Carter, the former US President, Menachim Begin, the former Israeli Prime Minister, and Anwar Sadat, the late Egyptian President.

When they reached their peace accords at Camp David in 1978, they created a monster handshake with all six palms stacked up on top of each other like children in a playground. As they were to learn to their cost, however, the handshake is a deadly serious instrument of diplomacy in the Middle East.

Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish fanatic after his historic peacemaking with Arafat. Sadat was murdered by Muslim militants for exactly the same “crime” three years after Camp David.

That may help to explain why other participants in Annapolis, like the Saudi and Syrian delegates, did not come forward to shake hands with Mr Olmert or members of his team.

“We are not here for theatre. We are here for the serious business of making peace. We are not here to give an impression that everything is normal,” said Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi Foreign Minister. “Shaking hands gives an impression of something that is not there.”

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