On her seventh visit to the region since Palestinian-Israeli negotiations were revived at the Annapolis conference last November, the top U.S. diplomat arrived to speak to an Israeli prime minister on his way out of office next month and a Palestinian president [partially] leading a divided and stateless nation.
Yet the lame duck key players suggested they were not giving up, and continued to insist on pursuing the Annapolis process, which many observers see as a dead end that cannot possibly result in a deal that entails establishing a Palestinian state before the U.S. president's term expires on Jan. 9.
Despite the objective looking more like an illusion than a possibility considering the conditions on the ground, the U.S. state secretary remained optimistic.
"We continue to have the same goal, which is to reach agreement by the end of the year," Rice told reporters traveling on the plane from Washington to Tel Aviv. But she admitted that it was a "complicated time," only to add in the same breath that "it's always complicated out here."
The goal set out in Annapolis, which revived the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations after a seven-year lull, was to reach a negotiated settlement to resolve the tough final issues of the borders, Jewish settlements, status of Jerusalem and the fate of some 5 million Palestinian refugees forced to leave their homes where Israel was established in the 1948 war.
Negotiations, however, have made little if any progress in the wake of continued Jewish settlement expansion on territories captured in 1967, an Israeli political crisis in which Prime Minister Ehud Olmert decided to step down in September as he faces charges of corruption, and a Palestinian geopolitical division between a Hamas-controlled Gaza and a Fatah-led authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.
Rice arrived in Tel Aviv just a few hours after Israel released 198 Palestinian prisoners in what it said was a "goodwill" gesture to boost Abbas's domestic standing. The Palestinian president has come under growing criticism for pursuing a negotiating process while Israel continues to build settlements and erect the separation barrier on expropriated Palestinian lands.
Abbas's aides said the release was very significant, especially since it included for the first time two detainees sentenced to consecutive life terms and convicted of killing Israelis. They said their release showed that political negotiations can achieve demands.
However, Abbas told thousands of people who gathered to receive the liberated prisoners in Ramallah that he will not rest and there can be no peace with Israel until the remaining 11,000 Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails, including women and children, are freed.
Since Annapolis and the start of the final status negotiations, Israel has arrested more than 3,700 Palestinians.
Abbas went further, adding that there will not be a final deal that does not resolve all the other issues in one accord, including Jerusalem, refugees, borders and East Jerusalem as the capital of a promised Palestinian state.
Israel insists that Jerusalem is its "united and eternal" capital and refuses the return of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel.
Rice acknowledged on the flight to Tel Aviv, her first since Olmert announced on July 30 that he is stepping down after his Kadima party elects a new leader in September, that "we have a lot of work ahead" to reach a peace deal.
Palestinian and Arab commentators say, however, that whatever the work entails, Rice's shuttle diplomacy and jet lags are not likely to pay off if Washington continues to appease Israeli policy and refrains from pressuring Israel into meeting its Annapolis commitments to freeze settlements and dismantle the outposts, and thus stop creating new realities on the ground seen as pre-empting the possibility of creating a Palestinian state.
Reports from the U.S. State Department indicated that during her two-day visit, Rice would ask both sides to deliver a progress report focusing on areas of agreement before the U.N. General Assembly opens its 2008 session in late September.
But Palestinian and Israeli negotiators say they will not allow themselves to be pressured into producing such a document.
Rice denied pressuring either side, saying: "I don't think anyone has been trying to bring pressure to bridge the gaps. What we have been trying to do is help the parties see how their own conversations might converge."
Particularly adding to the unlikelihood of any Palestinian-Israeli progress is that with Olmert leaving office in the next few weeks, the new prime minister is expected to be less eager toward any taking Israeli steps for peace, as far as the Palestinians are concerned.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the chief negotiator slated to replace Olmert as Kadima party chief and possibly prime minister, will continue to support the peace process, but her statements indicate she will assume a harder line. On Thursday, she played down expectations of meeting a deal by year's end.
The other party contender is Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz, a hawkish former general who would move Kadima more toward the right.
If the party fails to keep the form of a coalition government within 48 days, new elections will be held in early 2009, putting on hold any real prospects for progress in the negotiations and probably bringing to power right-wing Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu.