The United States is back in the business of encouraging Israelis to compromise with Arabs.

After some years of mostly remaining aloof from the peace process, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been making regular visits to the Middle East aimed at bringing Israeli and Palestinian officials back together. As U.S.News & World Report put it, “Rice is behaving like a convert to the idea that American secretaries of state need to search for peace in the Holy Land” (April 1).

The stark truth is that every previous secretary of state has failed in this search. This is because all these peace efforts are based on the erroneous assumption that the Palestinians are willing to peacefully accept Israel’s presence in the region. And the problem with resurrecting these efforts now is that nothing that sank every past attempt has changed. U.S.News reported,

U.S. activism has returned, arguably, at one of the least propitious moments in recent years. The radical Hamas movement (which rejects past accords with Israel) dominates the new Palestinian “unity” government, leaving Fatah chief [Mahmoud] Abbas with limited authority. And these are tough times also for [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert, assailed for Israel’s poor military performance in last summer’s Lebanon war and for corruption scandals touching key officials around him. His popularity has fallen to single digits.

Nevertheless, last week, Rice embraced an Arab League proposal it had previously (wisely) ignored which is based on the idea that Israel giving up more land could move Arab states toward recognizing Israel. And in a move that injects false hope into a hopeless situation, President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert agreed to begin meeting every other week.

We can predict two possible outcomes from these talks. The first possibility is that Palestinian enemies of the peace process will ramp up their violent resistance, at which point Israel will pull away before anything is agreed upon. The second possibility is that Palestinian enemies will manage to restrain themselves until Israel does agree to give away territory or make some other concessions, at which point they will celebrate their victory and press on with increased determination in the larger goal of eliminating the Jewish state.

The Arab-Jew conflict will never be solved through human diplomatic efforts. The United States is on a fool’s errand. Read “Peace Through Diplomacy: Can It Work?” in the May 2007 issue of the Philadelphia Trumpet.