Senior Fellow John R. Bolton

President Bush's just-concluded Middle East trip has sparked hope in several key areas, particularly confronting Iran's bad behavior and making progress in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

But here's the essential fix the President is in: He is far more likely to be successful in countering Iran's expanding influence and dealing with other major regional problems than in resolving the Arab-Israeli dispute--yet his pursuit of the former goal is impeded by his policies concerning the latter.

This view is contrary to the conventional wisdom of most Europeans and many Americans, namely that peace between Israelis and Arabs will facilitate solutions to other Middle East disturbances.

Under this theory, once desires for a Palestinian state become a reality, the terrorist threat to Israel will decrease, Lebanon will become more stable, Iraq will grow calmer and the combined IranianSyrian threat will recede. Perhaps even the price of oil will come down.

Pursuing this Holy Grail, however, is manifestly wrong. If Israel's most implacable opponents got their fondest wish, and Israel simply disappeared, all of the region's other fault lines would remain. Diplomatic efforts alone cannot change the objective reality on the ground, which is not at all conducive to yet another "peace process."

If we hope to make real progress, we must face unpleasant facts.

The Israeli government is an unsteady coalition whose political prospects are grim at best. Indeed, it is a commonplace that it is only the government's weakness that keeps it in power, as each of the constituent parties fear that their respective Knesset memberships would diminish after an election. This analysis is not a criticism of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government but simply a statement of the political reality in Israel. This is not a recipe for dramatic and risky diplomacy over Israel's very future.

Things are far worse on the Palestinian side. The election of Hamas has broken the Palestinian Authority into two possibly irreconcilable pieces, with Hamas in Gaza and Fatah on the West Bank. Neither can exercise assured power over their respective territories, and the lives of average Palestinians daily grow more difficult. There is no Palestinian leader who can implement whatever commitments might be made in negotiations with the Olmert government.

It defies common sense, therefore, to believe that even vigorous U.S. diplomatic efforts through the Annapolis Process can result in true progress. Hope, goodwill, shuttle diplomacy and even presidential prestige will not suffice. The present circumstances instead argue for benign neglect and the possibility that an Israeli government will emerge that can take risks for peace--and that somehow the Palestinians can glue themselves back together. No outside party can do it for them.

Continuing to pursue Annapolis, as the President seems bent on doing, risks an even greater loss to American leverage and prestige. Failure of a major presidential effort would also set us back in pursuing our vital objectives in Iraq and against Iran and Syria.

Saying, as the State Department undoubtedly will, that we must continue the peace process now that it has started represents what economists call "the fallacy of sunken costs." Noneconomists know this phenomenon as throwing good money after bad.

President Bush urgently needs to pursue Iraq to a successful conclusion. He needs to resuscitate a tough policy against Iran's nuclear program and its ceaseless support of international terrorism. He needs to buttress the fragile democratic government of Lebanon and squelch Syrian efforts to aid Iran's hegemonic aspirations.

All of these critical goals will consume enormous amounts of presidential time and prestige, assets that President Bush can ill afford to squander on Annapolis. We can only hope that he has returned from his trip with this conclusion.

John R. Bolton is a senior fellow at AEI.