JERUSALEM — After prodding the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table for the first time in nearly seven years, the Bush administration now confronts a stalemate that threatens to undermine the latest peace initiative and further diminish American influence in the Middle East.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas put negotiators to work last week with instructions to make progress in advance of a U.S.-sponsored peace conference tentatively set for next month. Yet the talks have reached an impasse, aides said, prompting the two leaders to look to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to salvage the effort during a six-day visit to the region starting this weekend.
The administration's effort is hobbled by stark differences between two sides with weak leaders who face hawkish opposition at home and cannot even agree on what kind of joint document to strive for as a basis for the conference.
And although Rice has visited the region nearly every month this year, the administration has been leery from its beginnings about taking an active role in mediating the core issues of the conflict -- the borders of a new Palestinian state, what part of Jerusalem it would include and whether any of the millions of Palestinian refugees would be allowed to return to Israel.
"It's hard to imagine that we're a month before the conference and the parties still don't have a common concept of what they're after," said David Makovsky, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "If you don't know where you want to go, no car can get you there."
A breakdown of the peace effort would deal a blow to the U.S. aims of shoring up Palestinian moderates, weakening militant Islamic forces in the region and winning Arab support on issues related to Iraq and Iran. With Arab expectations high, some are predicting that an inconclusive outcome at the peace conference would set off a new round of Israeli-Palestinian bloodletting.
"The entire process has numerous weaknesses," said Amir Kulick, an analyst for Israel's Institute for National Security Studies. "There is a great chance that it will fail."
When President Bush called in July for an international peace gathering, he stressed the goal of bolstering Abbas' West Bank-based secular Fatah-led administration in its power struggle with Hamas, the militant Islamic movement that weeks earlier had seized control of the Gaza Strip and refuses to renounce violence against Israel.
