Mideast peace this time? Not likely

It was probably inevitable.

Like every president before him for the past 50 years or so, President Bush has now taken his stab at "Mideast peacemaking."

The most notable success along these lines was that of Jimmy Carter and the 1978 "Camp David Accords" between Egyptian President Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Begin, followed by the Bill Clinton's brokering of the 1993 "Oslo Accords" between Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Rabin.

Success may not be the right word though. After all, Sadat was assassinated following the first agreement, and Rabin was assassinated after the second agreement. Both men and their partners won the Nobel Peace Prize before they were murdered, but the lack of peace in the region speaks for itself.

Now, we read that President Bush and Mideast leaders are again optimistic about the possibility of peace between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Everyone else presumably is pessimistic. After all, there is no middle ground between Israel's right to exist and the Palestinians' right to reclaim the land given to Israel in 1948 - that is, unless you agree with Iran's President Ahmadinejad that Israel should be packed up and moved to the wide-open spaces of Canada.

Nonetheless, talking is better than shooting, so the first peace talks in more than six years should certainly be embraced. Now, we can watch as the two sides dance with each other over such thorny issues as the borders of a Palestinian state, the ownership of Jerusalem, the status of Palestinian refugees and the right of Israel not to be shelled and bombed.

The funny thing is that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas might actually be able to agree on the fundamental issues, just as their predecessors were able to do.

The problem is that the ill will between the Palestinians and Israelis is so ingrained that there is almost no chance of selling a peace deal to the people who need to keep it.

Besides, the summit could only be held in the first place by excluding Hamas, the terrorist organization which was elected as the government of the Palestinian people in January 2006. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, while Abbas's Palestinian Authority controls the West Bank, but neither controls the Palestinians - or their guns.

Were a true peace deal to be brokered, it would unfortunately be easily subverted by Hamas or Ahmadinejad, and we could expect a rapid return to the usual mayhem. Maybe that's why nearly 50 percent of Israelis already have decided the summit was a failure.

Pessimistic, but not unrealistic.