Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas both know they will have to make major concessions and undertake major commitments to establish any credible agreement that has any chance of holding. But they also know that the very act of making such concessions will open them up to renewed challenges – from hard-line Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu in Olmert's case and from the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, that already controls Gaza, in the case of Abbas.

Currently, Olmert and Abbas are both weak, largely discredited leaders in their own constituencies, neither of whom has yet been able to step out from the outsize shadows cast by their legendary predecessors Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat. American policymakers should therefore realize that while Olmert and Abbas are motivated to cooperate by their mutual weakness, they can both only politically survive to make an agreement between them work if they gain in credibility and strength. And for that to happen, both men must be able to show tangible successes and gains to their populations before any final agreement is reached.

The negotiating process that has been launched at Annapolis this week therefore should not focus all of its energies initially into hammering out a comprehensive final status agreement: That certainly is and should remain its goal. But before that holy grail – unattainable by so many previous generations of negotiators – can be reached, both sides and their American enablers should recall the successful example of U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the mid-1970s. They should seek to reach initial specific agreements that will ease and end the economic suffering of the Palestinians, reduce the oppressive Israeli military presence on the West Bank, freeze Israeli settlement building and, in return, maintain effective security from guerrilla attacks against Israeli civilians.

Once those goals are achieved, the status of Olmert and Abbas among their own populations will rise. They will be appreciated for succeeding where Sharon and Arafat failed to establish any kind of relationship except mutually ruinous confrontation. Only then, will they enjoy the wave of mainstream, popular support in their own communities that they will need to sideline and marginalize the inevitable challenges from extremists in both camps that can be predicted to attack any final status agreement and strangle it at birth.

None of this means that a final status agreement can, or should, be endlessly deferred. If that were to happen, the positions of Olmert and Abbas would crumble anyway. U.S. policymakers would therefore do well to hold both sides to a clear and relatively short timetable: Such a discipline is essential to reassure restless communities on both sides that the talks will not be allowed to dwindle into a never-ending, never-advancing, irrelevant cul-de-sac.

Peace is not impossible nor is it unattainable. But it cannot be reached in a single giant leap. Stepping stones need to be laid first – and fast.