By Ellen Ratner

Here's a modern proverb about an ancient land: After one week in Israel/Palestine, you're qualified to write a book; spend a month, and you can write an article; spend a year, and you can write nothing. This reveals two things: Those who talk the most often know least, and those who talk least know the most. An oversimplification? Not really in a land where even the drinking water is an argument. Everything there is a major negotiation from control of Jerusalem, water rights, West Bank settlements, refugee's "right of return" (including not just Palestinians but almost a million Jews thrown out of Arab countries after the 1948 war), the Golan Heights etc. I could go on, but the arguments are almost biblical, and so is the exegesis.

Like I said, the longer you spend the less you know for certain. It's no stick drawing. Last week the Bush administration convened the one-day Annapolis Peace Conference, and 44 countries attended. Everybody knew nothing could really be decided, but in a region where even a decision to think about deciding something is a big deal, hopes were high. Could the United States reignite the once-hot negotiating flame between Israel and the Palestinians? The Bush administration took seven years to even light the match. And even now, speculation is high that Bush wasn't about to repeat Clinton's error and stake the whole last year of his presidential legacy on a peace process between reluctant peacemakers.

And what happened? What the Israelis love to quote about Palestinians – that they "never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity" – now applies to the Bush administration itself. Seven years have come and gone with nary a peacemaking peep out of the Bushies till now. No shuttle diplomacy, no photo ops, no high-profile White House visits, and all the other stuff that the big, tough neo-cons dismiss as so much tinsel. And guess what? No peace either. White House concern for the peace process has been as dry as the desert.

Not just dry but vacant. It turns out that the U.S. wasn't going to exercise genuine leadership. Rather, the plan was to turn the whole thing over to the dreaded United Nations for their approval. Why not stick them with it? So Secretary Rice directed U.N. Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad to involve the United Nations Security Council in a resolution this week only to withdraw it after Israel objected. The exact circumstances of how this happened remain unclear, but it seems that it went something like this: The State Department circulated a resolution for the United Nations Security Council that had the support of the Arab nations. It was to support the Annapolis Peace Process. All was going well until Israel objected, and the resolution was withdrawn. It seems as if Secretary Rice got the resolution approved but forgot somehow to get Israel involved in the OK. They didn't even know the resolution's contents. Result? Duh! The resolution gets withdrawn, and the United States looks like amateur hour in terms of diplomacy.

The watch stopped before Condi-Bush could get their 15 minutes on the Mideast show. And as Napoleon once said, "Success has many fathers, but defeat is an orphan." So when time came to acknowledge the mistake, did anyone hear about it at a White House press conference? No. It was announced by a U.N. deputy ambassador at the U.N. Bush's hands-off approach turns out to be hands in his pockets. Few direct negotiations with the president or Secretary Rice. It's all be fobbed-off to a "special envoy." Alfred E. Newman has the translation: "What, me worry?"

Unfortunately, the region had a seven-year itch, scratched, and now, the patient is almost dead. Everything changed. Iran's ambitions have scared the Sunni part of the region so that even Saudi Arabia went to Annapolis. The bad news is the Israeli and Palestinian leaders doing the negotiating are a Semitic version of Punch and Judy. Prime Minister Olmert faces strong opposition from the right on West Bank negotiations; his approval is in the single digits; he's almost as popular with Israelis as former Secretary of State James Baker.

President Abbas is almost a man without a country, or at least one-half a country. He doesn't control Gaza, and his hold on the West Bank may be tenuous. While Abbas and Olmert have a good personal relationship, it as if is like two old guys on the verge of retirement talking about golf. What's less funny is if they can't get the support of their respective populace, it is all fairly meaningless.

Step back, and spend the equivalent of seven years in the region (just as the U.S. has not). Annapolis is too little, too late. The United States insisted on Palestinian democracy (elections) and wound up with Hamas. And what Hamas couldn't get that the ballot box, they have managed to shoot into. Now these thugs, not at Annapolis, might as well have been – the 800-pound elephant in the room. Hamas, of course, will not negotiate with the Israel. It is like our policy in Pakistan where we support elections and whine about the results.

As the U.S. is discovering, even when it doesn't botch Diplomacy 101, too little too late is not just a description of a failed love affair – in this case, it has helped set the scene for what may loom as a gigantic war: At the worst some believe that a nuclear-armed Iran backing Hamas against a nuclear-armed Israel fighting for its existence. Bush's seven-year vacation was about six years and 11 months too long. Some peace; some process, huh?