Plenty of hype is emanating from Washington, but from the perspective of anyone sitting on this side of the world it all sounds much like more spin from a U.S. administration that has rarely let Middle East reality intrude on its fantasy world.

Even if Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas were to cut a deal, the reality is that his government is impotent to implement it. If anyone required a reminder of the deep divisions within the Palestinian camp, they need look no further than this week's bloody clashes between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza. If Abbas' supporters can't even hold a rally to commemorate Yasser Arafat, father of the Palestinian struggle, can he really enforce a peace deal?

That Abbas was essentially bullied into jettisoning any notion of a document that would define the direction of the Annapolis summit does not bode well for his bargaining position once he gets to the table. And the fact that his representatives had to cancel a preliminary negotiating session with the Israelis Sunday because they were prevented from passing through an Israeli checkpoint says volumes about their leverage in the eventual peace talks themselves.

All of that is assuming the weak government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert actually wants, or is itself in a position to enforce, an agreement among its fractious political allies. Olmert seemed to be playing to the home crowd this week when he said the Annapolis summit would last "a few hours" but that a peace deal would take a year or more.

By that point, of course, the Bush administration will be history, which underlines Washington's own weak position as it dusts off the fading "roadmap to peace." The president's popularity is now lower than that of the despised Richard Nixon, who was driven from office in disgrace, which raises the question of whether this exercise is intended to achieve peace or serve as a distraction from the foreign U.S. policy disasters unfolding from Lebanon to Lahore. Either way, the sad reality is that it's the weak leading the weak down the road to Annapolis, which any map will show, is a dead end.