JERUSALEM — As Condoleezza Rice completes what likely will be her final swing through the Middle East as America's top diplomat, she leaves behind an unfinished peace process and a lingering debate about whether the Bush administration brought the region any closer to a lasting Israeli-Palestinian accord.
The secretary of State's regional tour, her 19th in two years, included a stop Sunday in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik for an update on the direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations launched under U.S. guidance nearly a year ago in Annapolis, Md.
Along the way, she has acknowledged the failure of the talks to reach their stated goal of a lasting peace agreement by the end of the Bush administration. But Rice has also defended the Annapolis process as having created a solid foundation for a future deal.
"While we may not yet be at the finish line, I am quite certain that if Palestinians and Israelis stay on the Annapolis course, they are going to cross that finish line and can do so relatively soon," she said. "We have an international strategy now to finally establish the two-state solution."
Israelis and Palestinians were a little less forgiving regarding the ultimate legacy of the Bush initiative.
"It's dead and they don't want to admit the failure," said Hani Masri, a Palestinian analyst and columnist. "All it produced was a model for negotiations until the end of time."
Menachem Klein, a professor of political science at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, said there had been no tangible progress in negotiations while the situation on the ground actually moved backward in the last year. Core hurdles such as the status of Jerusalem and the right of return for Palestinian refugees in the diaspora remain just as stalemated as they were in 2001, when the last set of serious negotiations broke down.
Meanwhile, Klein said, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas -- having staked his political future on a negotiated solution -- is weaker than ever.
"There's been no breakthrough, no movement, nothing," said Klein, author of "The Jerusalem Problem: The Struggle for the Permanent Solution." "The two sides are stuck."
Skepticism surrounded the Bush administration initiative since well before the Nov. 27, 2007, curtain-raising summit. After years of relative inaction, Bush's ambitious goal of a deal for an independent Palestinian state by January was called unrealistic on both sides.
