Is the Shuttle Slowing Down for Rice's Diplomacy in the Middle East?

JERUSALEM, March 26, 2007 — -- So it's come to this.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice makes four trips to the Middle East in as many months and now she tells us that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert actually have nothing to talk to each other about.

Rice has been touring the Middle East trying to persuade Arab governments to breathe new life into a peace plan they ratified in 2002. But after the latest round of meetings Sunday, in which Rice met separately with Abbas and Olmert to gauge the chances for peace talks in which both sides would initially talk to the United States rather than directly to each other, no accord seemed imminent.

In Jerusalem Sunday, Rice was putting a brave face on it. She said the United States would continue to hold talks with both sides to try and clarify their positions on the key negotiating issues.

But as for getting them together around the same table anytime soon? Forget it.

After so much shuttle diplomacy and so many air miles, it seems a big letdown.

But the truth is that no one here, least of all Israelis and Palestinians, expected anything more. Both sides are in disarray. Both sides are burdened by weak leaders, and both are riven with catastrophic political divisions.

The Palestinians have only just stopped killing each other in the streets of Gaza, and the Israelis seem in a downward spiral of public corruption and massive loss of faith in politics of any kind.

Both Olmert and Abbas spend most of their days just trying to survive. Little time is left for dramatic gestures of peace. For both men, risk-taking is strictly off the agenda.

Given the political landscape it seems there is little that can be achieved except what some are calling the "management" of the conflict.

Long gone are the days of big summits designed to end the conflict in one grand flourish. It seems that now there is little prospect of that. Instead, there is talk of "security arrangements" and "management of border crossings," hardly the stuff to bother the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.

It's a depressing outlook, but probably the correct one. There aren't many in the Middle East who see it differently. The Israelis tell you there's no one on the other side to talk to, and Palestinians are convinced it will be years before the Israeli peace camp is revived.

In the meantime, it's down to conflict management, and as one pessimist keeps telling reporters, it may be time for the sides to reload for the next round of fighting.

Wire services contributed to this report.