Given the seemingly obvious peace solution � two states for two peoples � and the apparent inability of the parties to consummate an agreement themselves, frustrated participants in the �process� conclude we should simply apply enough pressure to get the parties to reach the right result.

But, in the real world, �pushing the parties� inevitably turns into pushing only one of them � Israel � because the United States has virtually no leverage over the Palestinians. And once the United States �spells out� the deal, and �pushes� Israel to accept it (no more �incremental steps�), what if Arafat (or his designee) simply refuses to accept it, on grounds it is not good enough?

Perhaps Arafat could be given an ultimatum � but even Malley recognizes that Arafat �sees in every ultimatum a last demand before the next concession.�

. . . The other factor behind the desire for the U.S. to step in, spell out, and push over the parties is the mistaken belief they were in fact close to an agreement at Taba � one that could be consummated with sufficient pressure from an �involved� U.S. president, with a �full-time� Middle East envoy, and a spelled-out �final proposal.�

No one has taken this position more often than John Kerry during his presidential campaign. If there is one foreign policy moment seared in his memory, it is how close to peace the Israelis and Palestinians allegedly came in January 2001 at Taba:

1. In his presentation to the Council on Foreign Relations on December 3, 2003, Kerry said it was �astonishing� we were not �picking up somewhere near where we left off at Taba, where most of the difficult issues were resolved, in many ways.�

2. On January 3, 2004 in Iowa, Kerry said it was �clear to those who thought hard about it, that what happened in Taba, which is where they negotiated in the last months of the Clinton administration, is a close framework of what some kind of vision of peace is gonna look like.�

3. On April 23, 2004, in remarks to the Joint Conference of the Newspaper Association of America and American Society of Newspaper Editors, Kerry said if �you go back to Taba, President Clinton in fact arrived at an agreement on right of return as well as the annexation of a number of settlements.�

None of that happened. Indeed, it would not seem possible to pack more errors into a single sentence than Kerry did in his repeated descriptions of Taba.