It has not demonstrated that it is committed to peace. It is still holding Gilad Shalit, who has now experienced his third birthday in captivity. If it had any interest in something more durable than a ceasefire, it would release the young soldier.

The fact is that neither Israel nor Hamas wants to cut a real deal with the other. Hamas is not reconciled to Israel's existence and probably never will be. With a choice between the Palestinian Authority, which is genuinely eager for full peace with Israel, and the fundamentalist militants of Hamas, Israel would be foolish to prefer Hamas.

There is one caveat. The Palestinian Authority only controls the West Bank. That is why Israel had no choice but to deal with Hamas and it is why it should seek to prolong the ceasefire as long as possible. No doubt Hamas is rearming in anticipation of the ceasefire's collapse, but so what? Israel isn't exactly turning its guns into ploughshares either.

It remains a disaster for Palestinians and Israelis alike that Hamas rules Gaza. But there is one lesson that comes out of its rise to power: the role of the United States is critical.

If it were not for the George W. Bush administration's now abandoned democracy kick, the Palestinians would not have held the elections that brought Hamas to power. Elections were not required and, without them, Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah would have had the chance to clean up their act and consolidate their position. But the Bush administration -- influenced by Natan Sharansky and his bizarre conception of democracy -- insisted on elections.

Is there a method to the madness? Of course there is. Right-wingers in Israel and the United States have never wanted Israelis and Palestinians to reach a deal. They have always preferred that the Palestinians be represented by the most extreme anti-Israel elements.

That is why the Likud government promoted Hamas back in the 1980s as an alternative to the PLO (which had moved toward the two-state solution). That is why they continued to excoriate Yasser Arafat even when he was successfully combating Hamas. That is why the lobby here did everything it could to reduce aid to Abbas when he was fighting to maintain control over the West Bank and Gaza. At one point the lobby went to Capitol Hill to tell the House Appropriations Committee to cut the aid to Abbas that both the Bush administration and the Israeli government believed was necessary to defeat Hamas. (The lobby felt no need to justify its action; it successfully had the aid cut because it could.)

In other words, the United States matters. This is not to say that Israel is not a sovereign country which must determine its own policies based on its security needs. But it should be able to do that without having to deal with ideologues in Washington who try to impose American modalities to the Middle East. Nor should it have to worry about being undermined by a lobby that, like all lobbies, is more concerned about its organizational clout than about anything else.

The American presidential election is critical. Israel is in an infinitely worse strategic position today than it was in 2000. That is due to the influence of the neoconservatives who pushed for the disastrous war with Iraq, suspended U.S. support for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and simply let the conflict bleed for seven years. If the neoconservatives remain influential in the next administration, Israel is in big trouble.

Obviously, they will not be part of an Obama-Biden administration; they despise the neocons and the feeling is mutual.

As for McCain-Palin, the jury is still out. McCain is not Rudy Giuliani, whose idea of a great foreign policy thinker is Norman Podhoretz or Daniel Pipes. He is also too tough minded to be persuaded by the armchair warriors of neoconservatism. McCain and Palin are both pretty much of a blank slate on Israeli-Palestinian issues, which means that they have the freedom to move wherever the national interest dictates, if they so choose.

So we'll see. America needs a realistic Middle East policy -- realistic from the perspectives of both the United States and Israel. We'll find out during the campaign which, if either, of the two candidates is offering it.

Coincidentally, the next U.S. president will be dealing with a new Israeli prime minister.

If I had to make a prediction, I would guess that it will be Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. The Labor Party under Ehud Barak has almost no popular support; it probably needs a few years in opposition to regroup and become a force in Israeli politics again.

The polls show that if Livni wins the September Kadima primary but is unable to form a new coalition, she will be defeated in new elections by Likud's Bibi Netanyahu. I don't think so. Netanyahu, like Ehud Barak, had his chance as prime minister back in the 1990s. Like Barak, he failed. It seems to me that Israelis are ready for someone new and, especially, someone who is entirely untainted by charges of corruption.

That would be Livni, who is also, to her great advantage, a pragmatist and a realist. She is ready for peace with the Palestinians assuming that Israel's security can be assured. Netanyahu would prefer to go back to the pre-Oslo era when Israel could pretend that the Palestinians could be both ignored and kept under occupation.

In any case, there is going to be new leadership in both Washington and Jerusalem. Will it be "new and improved" or just new? To that question I have no answer.

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MJ Rosenberg, Director of Policy Analysis for Israel Policy Forum, was a long time Capitol Hill staffer and former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report. The views expressed in IPF Friday are those of MJ Rosenberg and not necessarily of Israel Policy Forum. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).