A trilateral summit between the U.S., Israel and Palestinians held this week yielded no statement and no progress apart from a pledge to keep talking. In the diplomatic morass of the Middle East, even the United States is willing to consider the mere fact that a summit was held to be "useful and productive." But real progress is contingent on Hamas' decision to accept Israel's right to exist, a step the group is thus far unwilling to take.
Trilateral talks had not been held for six years. The Bush administration had made its distaste for the Palestinian leadership obvious and absent prodding from Washington, Israel was content to let Palestinians fight among themselves while Tel Aviv created facts on the ground and moved forward as it saw fit.
Both Washington and Tel Aviv mistakenly believed a weakened Palestinian leadership was to their advantage. They failed to realize that Palestinians would not be content with an ineffectual government and were prepared to replace Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah movement with a more hardline group. That happened in legislative elections in the Palestinian territory a little over a year ago, won by Hamas, which has never accepted Israel's right to exist. The best face that could be put on the election result was the hope that governing would force the group to compromise its hardline positions. That did not happen. Instead, Fatah and Hamas struggled for power, a bloody contest that has claimed in excess of 100 lives. About a month ago, pressed by the violence and the need to do something about its image in the Middle East -- the Bush administration seems to have grasped that its plans for Iraq depends, in part, on progress in the Israel-Palestinian conflict -- Washington began to push for the trilateral summit.