“This has nothing to do with the occupation and the settlements,” Netanyahu said.

Kerry pressed on: “When I fought in Vietnam, I used to look at the faces of the local population and the looks they gave us. I’ll never forget it. It gave me clarity that we saw the situation in completely different ways.”

“This isn’t Vietnam!” Netanyahu shouted. “No one understands Israel but Israel.”

Kerry tried explaining himself again: “No one is saying it’s Vietnam. But I’ve been coming here for thirty years, and I’m telling you, what’s building up in the Palestinians has only gotten worse. I’ve seen it. It doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong; it just is. It can’t be solved if you can’t see it how they see it.”

By that time, it was becoming clear that a comprehensive peace treaty would be impossible before the talks’ April 29 deadline. But Kerry had a backup plan. He would get the sides to accept a U.S. “framework for negotiations”—a document spelling out parameters on all core issues—then push for a full deal with a new deadline. The good news was that, after previous rounds of talks and model treaties like the 2003 Geneva Initiative, the principles of any plausible Israeli-Palestinian deal—a demilitarized Palestinian state, borders based on the 1967 lines, a shared Jerusalem, and no mass return of Palestinian refugees to Israel—were known. The bad news was that neither leader supported them all publicly, and Netanyahu had built his political career opposing many of them. To assuage Bibi, Kerry decided to begin the framework talks on security. If the United States could put together a package that would satisfy Netanyahu on his flagship issue, the reasoning went, it might compel him to show flexibility on the others. To this end, Kerry recruited John Allen, a former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, to craft a plan that would guarantee Israel’s security after a peace deal.

Much of Allen’s work would revolve around the contentious Jordan Valley, the swath of West Bank land abutting Jordan. Netanyahu wanted to keep a long-term Israeli force there to prevent the smuggling of terrorists and weapons, while Abbas was demanding a full Israeli withdrawal within three years. In freewheeling sessions at Jerusalem’s David Citadel Hotel, overlooking the basilicas of the Old City’s Christian quarter, Kerry would take off his jacket and challenge his team to brainstorm ideas that could square the two sides’ needs. (The Kerry team spoke more carefully over cell phones, believing the Israelis might be listening.) “Guys,” Kerry said, “Bibi has said a million times that he’s not going to accept an international force. So we need to think creatively.” One person noted that Abbas was open to an American force. “No,” Kerry said, “Bibi will say that he doesn’t want American guys getting shot at defending Israel.” Every conceivable idea was discussed, and Kerry—a former college debate champion—raised every conceivable Netanyahu objection.

In early December, Kerry presented Allen’s proposals to the Israelis. While they sidestepped the question of when Israeli forces would leave the Jordan Valley, they sketched out what the area—and the rest of the West Bank—might look like after they did. The future Palestinian-Jordanian border would include new early warning infrastructure, an invisible Israeli presence (via cameras) at border crossings, and top-shelf American gadgetry. Livni liked the package. So did most of Israel’s security brass. Even hard-line Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was making conciliatory noises. “Israel will not get more than it is getting from Kerry,” he said publicly. Netanyahu saw it as a basis for discussion.

Netanyahu’s hawkish defense minister—Likud’s Moshe Ya’alon—thought it was worthless. “The Americans think we are natives who will be impressed with their technology,” he told one confidant. “Don’t they know that we are the masters of technology?” Unfortunately for everyone involved, it was impossible to imagine the Israeli government approving any deal without Ya'alon's support.

For months, the Americans had courted the crusty defense minister and concluded that he was—in the words of one senior official—“beyond repair.” Ya’alon, meanwhile, railed about American naïveté in off-the-record briefings with journalists. On January 14, an Israeli newspaper published some of his remarks, including his diagnosis of Kerry as “obsessive” and “messianic.” “The only thing that can save us,” Ya’alon said, “is for John Kerry to win his Nobel Prize and leave us alone.”

As Netanyahu kept one eye on his negotiations with the Americans during December and January, he was keeping another on his coalition. Right-wing parties had toppled his first government in 1999 over his actions in the peace process, and he wasn’t eager to relive the experience.

The primary source of Netanyahu’s heartburn was Naftali Bennett, the ambitious leader of the Jewish Home Party. In 2006, when Netanyahu was the leader of the opposition, Bennett began working as Netanyahu’s chief of staff, only to be fired after repeatedly clashing with Bibi's wife. Now, Bennett was acting like the coalition partner from hell. Whatever Netanyahu said or did, Bennett—determined to supplant the prime minister as leader of the right—would try painting it as further evidence that he had abandoned his values.

Speaking at Davos on January 24, Netanyahu said something that should have appeased his base: “I do not intend to evacuate any settlements or uproot a single Israeli.” But the comment’s Talmudic interpretation became clear two days later, when officials from Netanyahu’s office explained that he thought Israeli settlers should be permitted to remain in the West Bank under Palestinian sovereignty following a peace deal. Bennett saw a window of attack and issued a statement the following day accusing Netanyahu of “ethical befuddlement.”

“Two thousand years of longing for the Land of Israel did not pass so we could live under the rule of Abu Mazen,” he declared. The comment went unanswered, and the next day, aboard a plane bound for a Holocaust ceremony in Poland with other Israeli MKs, Bennett and his allies traded wisecracks about Netanyahu, riffing on how they had spooked the prime minister into silence. “Everyone could hear them,” said one MK.

Bennett kept on attacking upon his return from Poland. “You know why Jews can’t live under Palestinian sovereignty?” he said in a speech. “Because they’ll be killed!” The morning after that quip, Housing Minister Uri Ariel—the second-ranking member of Bennett’s bloc—got a call from a senior Netanyahu aide, who asked him to convey a message from the prime minister: Bennett had until ten o’clock on Sunday morning (it was then Wednesday) to apologize for his attacks, or he would be fired. Minutes later, Netanyahu’s ultimatum was Israel’s top news story.

While the loss of Jewish Home’s twelve MKs would leave Netanyahu five short of a majority—and therefore at risk of new elections—the prime minister seemed positively blasé. In leaked conversations from that day, officials in his office said they had “other options,” an apparent reference to the 15-MK Labor Party. Swapping Jewish Home for Labor would be an incredible gamble for the notoriously risk-averse prime minister. It would put him at the head of a coalition dominated by doves, who could then bring down his government if he was not flexible in the talks.

But if Netanyahu was preparing a coalition shakeup, nobody from his office had informed Labor leader Isaac Herzog. Is Bibi bluffing? Herzog wondered as he read the “other options” quote. He called Aryeh Deri, leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party (Netanyahu’s only other numerical route to a Bennett-less majority). “I haven’t heard from him, either,” Deri said. That day at the Knesset, Livni cornered Herzog in the hall and pressed him to join the government immediately. “We can’t waste any time,” she said.

Herzog resisted. “What’s the rush?” he said. “Let’s see what the Americans produce.”

While Livni and Herzog were talking, Bennett walked by. He stopped and looked the two over. “I see you’re already replacing me,” he said.

On the hard right, settler leaders and ministers were in a panic—a Palestinian state was about to be born because of a personal feud! Ariel urged Bennett to apologize. “This issue isn’t worth the fight,” he told him. “There are more urgent things to worry about: a settlement freeze, more prisoner releases.” Bennett, realizing that he had gone too far, backtracked that evening. “If the prime minister was hurt, that wasn’t my intention,” he said in a statement. Netanyahu agreed to accept the half-apology and move on, certain that another confrontation was only a matter of time.

Netanyahu had not become a peacenik overnight, but he understood that the status quo was not sustainable, that it put Israel in jeopardy of becoming a binational state. So he decided to go along with Kerry—objecting where he could, caving where he had no choice. By the end of January, in regular videoconferences and phone calls, Netanyahu and Kerry had moved well past security and on to borders and other issues. In the event of a framework, the prime minister would be permitted to express general reservations—but not on any particular issue—so he was intent on ensuring that he could live with every clause, however distasteful. Right-wing politicians, who had always been suspicious of Netanyahu, were becoming increasingly paranoid that something was being cooked up behind their backs, and those on the left were starting to express guarded hope. Nobody knew quite what to believe.

In December, Finance Minister Yair Lapid had asked Netanyahu what the odds were for achieving a framework. He was surprised at Netanyahu’s relative optimism. “Forty–sixty,” the prime minister had said. Following the Bennett fiasco, Lapid asked again. After a moment’s pause, the answer came back: “Sixty–forty.”

V.

By late January, the Americans believed that their strategy of patient engagement with Netanyahu was finally paying off. After months of painstaking negotiations over every word in the framework, the prime minister had accepted once-unthinkable language. On refugees, the document would promise monetary compensation to Palestinians displaced in Israel’s War of Independence (and, separately, to Jews who left their homes in the Arab world). It also stated clearly that “the Palestinian refugee problem” would be solved within the new Palestinian state. But, in a groundbreaking departure from Israeli policy and his previous statements, Netanyahu agreed to a mechanism whereby Israel—at its sole discretion—would admit some refugees on a humanitarian basis. The more dramatic Netanyahu concession, however, concerned borders. After decades of railing against any mention of the 1967 lines, Netanyahu accepted that “[t]he new secure and recognized border between Israel and Palestine will be negotiated based on the 1967 lines with mutual agreed swaps.” Said one Israeli official: “If the Israeli public knew back in February that Netanyahu agreed to include this sentence in the framework, it would have created a political earthquake.”

On other issues, though, Netanyahu was less amenable. Most notably, he rejected any explicit mention of the formula Prime Ministers Barak and Olmert had accepted for Jerusalem (Jewish neighborhoods for Israel; Arab neighborhoods for Palestine) and was prepared to accept only vague wording that spoke of “Palestinian aspirations” for a capital in the holy city. He also considered it essential that Israel be acknowledged as “the nation-state of the Jewish people,” a phrase the Americans inserted into the document against Abbas's strong objections (while clarifying that such recognition not abridge the rights of Israel’s Arab citizens). Despite Palestinian reservations about some of the evolving document’s language—Indyk was negotiating with Erekat in parallel—Kerry truly believed the gaps could be bridged with creativity and ambiguity.

Abbas had always been more wary. From the beginning, he felt as if Kerry was privileging Netanyahu’s needs over his. And the numbers seemed to bear the Palestinian leader out: Kerry had met with Netanyahu nearly twice as often as he had with him. It was not lost on the Palestinians, either, that the secretary’s team—Indyk, Lowenstein, Makovsky, Schwartz, Yaffe, Goldenberg, Blumenfeld—sounded like a Bar Mitzvah guest list. To Abbas, the asymmetry of the diplomatic triangle was best illustrated by a December meeting between him and Kerry at the muqata. The meeting, devoted to security issues, was supposed to have been attended also by General Allen. Kerry showed up without him. When Abbas asked where he was, Kerry apologized and explained that Allen needed to stay in Jerusalem and work more with Netanyahu.

The depth of Palestinian alienation became clear to Kerry and his team only on February 19, when the two sides met for dinner at Le Maurice Hotel in Paris—the kickoff to a three-day parley. As the Palestinians walked in the door, each American was struck with the same thought: These guys do not look like they’re in a good mood. Following dinner, Kerry met alone with Abbas while Erekat and Indyk spoke in a separate room. Afterward, Kerry and Indyk got in the car that would take them to their rooms at the Grande Hotel. The secretary turned to his envoy: “That was really negative.” At around the same time, Abbas, who was nursing a terrible cold, saw Erekat in the hall and told him that he was going straight to sleep. “It was a difficult meeting,” he said. “I’ll brief you tomorrow.”

The next morning, at around 7:30, Indyk called Erekat. “The secretary wants to see you,” he said. Erekat was surprised at the early time of the summons. This must be important. He put on a suit and took a cab to the Grande. When he and Indyk got to Kerry’s Louis XIII-style suite, the secretary answered the door. He was dressed casually: hotel slippers, no jacket or tie. He looked concerned. After a moment of silence, the first words came out of Kerry’s mouth. “Why is Abu Mazen so angry with me?”

Erekat responded that he hadn’t yet been briefed on the meeting, so Kerry offered to get his notes. “I barely said a word, and he started saying, ‘I cannot accept this,’” Kerry grumbled, going through some of Abbas’s red lines.

“What do you want?” Erekat said. “These are his positions. We are sick and tired of Bibi the Great. He’s taking you for a ride.”

“No one takes me for a ride!”

“He is refusing to negotiate on a map or even say 1967.”

“I’ve moved him,” Kerry said, “I’ve moved him.”

“Where?” Erekat said, raising his voice. “Show me! This is just the impression he’s giving you.”

The next month, Abbas led a Palestinian delegation to Washington. At a March 16 lunch at Kerry’s Georgetown home, the secretary asked Abbas if he’d accept delaying the fourth prisoner release by a few days. Kerry was worried that the Israelis were wavering. “No,” Abbas said. “I cannot do this.” Abbas would later describe that moment as a turning point. If the Americans can’t convince Israel to give me 26 prisoners, he thought then, how will they ever get them to give me East Jerusalem? At the meal, Erekat noticed Abbas displaying some of his telltale signs of discomfort. He was crossing his legs, looking over at him every two minutes. The index cards on which he normally took notes had been placed back in his suit pocket. Abbas was no longer interested in what was being said.

The next day at the White House, Obama tried his luck with the Palestinian leader. He reviewed the latest American proposals, some of which had been tilted in Abbas’s direction. (The document would now state categorically that there would be a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem.) “Don’t quibble with this detail or that detail,” Obama said. “The occupation will end. You will get a Palestinian state. You will never have an administration as committed to that as this one.” Abbas and Erekat were not impressed.

After the meeting, the Palestinian negotiator saw Susan Rice—Abbas’s favorite member of the Obama administration—in the hall. “Susan,” he said, “I see we’ve yet to succeed in making it clear to you that we Palestinians aren’t stupid.” Rice couldn’t believe it. “You Palestinians,” she told him, “can never see the fucking big picture.”

Almost two weeks later, at the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh, Obama, Kerry, and Rice held a series of meetings throughout the day in the president’s suite. With the hopes for a framework all but dead, Kerry’s goal had shifted to merely keeping the talks alive—no easy feat. Abbas was refusing to extend the discussions (or even to consider the U.S. framework proposals) until Kerry assured him that Israel would release the fourth and final tranche of prisoners. Netanyahu said he would only consider doing that if Abbas agreed to extend the talks—and even then, he’d have a hard time getting it through his Cabinet.

So Kerry concocted a grand bargain. Under the deal, Israel would release the fourth tranche, free another 400 prisoners of its choosing, and halt all new settlement announcements throughout the West Bank (though not in East Jerusalem). In return, the Palestinians would agree to extend talks for another nine months and Netanyahu would get a prize that Israeli prime ministers had been seeking for decades: the release of convicted Jewish-American spy Jonathan Pollard. Netanyahu was prepared to go along with the deal, and Abbas was signaling that he was, too. There was just one problem: President Obama was against it.

Kerry had first proposed using Pollard as a bargaining chip to Obama months earlier. The spy, serving the twenty-seventh year of a life sentence, was fewer than three years away from his parole. Why not get a diplomatic return for him and move the peace process forward while he still has value? Kerry thought. But Obama knew that Pollard was a third rail in the intelligence community; when President Clinton had toyed with a pardon, then–CIA director George Tenet had threatened to resign. Obama wasn’t going to touch the option unless it facilitated a true breakthrough.

Kerry was becoming desperate, though. At the Ritz, he explained to Obama and Rice that, without Pollard, the talks were days away from collapse (in part because of his initial miscommunication with Netanyahu). Obama wasn’t pleased. But late at night, after hours of talking, he gave Kerry the go-ahead. “I’m not doing this because I want to, John,” Obama said. “I’m doing this for you.

Like Kerry, Abbas felt that his credibility was at stake. He had promised the Palestinian people that the prisoners would be released on schedule, on March 29. But as the date approached, that was looking less and less likely. So Abbas continued working with Erekat on what he was calling “the Palestinian nuclear option.” He even put a timer on it: If Israel didn’t vote to release the fourth tranche by seven o’clock on the evening of April 1, Abbas would formally resume the U.N. bid in a grand ceremony at the muqata.

The night before that deadline, Kerry was supposed to meet Abbas at nine o’clock in Ramallah, but as of eleven, there was no sign of him. Erekat called the U.S. consul-general, who told him that Kerry was meeting with Netanyahu, and that it was running long. Abbas wanted to sleep, so he dispatched Erekat and Faraj to meet Kerry after midnight in Jerusalem. In his suite at the David Citadel, Kerry promised Erekat that the Israeli government would vote on the fourth prisoner release the following day.

“When?” Erekat pressed.

Kerry was peeved that Erekat was insisting on a specific hour. “Before noon,” he said.

Noon passed without a vote. Then one o’clock, then two, then three. Making matters worse, Israel’s Housing Ministry approved 708 new homes for a disputed neighborhood in East Jerusalem that afternoon. Abbas was nearing the end of his patience.

Around seven o'clock, he sat in his office with Erekat and Faraj. “Have you heard any word from the Israelis?” he asked Erekat.

“No,” Erekat replied. “Not a word.”

“How about you?” he asked Faraj, who gave the same answer.

The U.N.-ceremony attendees were taking their seats down the hall. “Let’s give them another half-hour,” he said.

Livni had no idea what was happening inside the muqata. She was sitting in the hall outside Netanyahu’s office, along with many other people, waiting for her turn to speak to the prime minister. But shortly before eight, she got a bad feeling: Everyone around her started receiving text messages, all at once. An aide turned on the television. There, beneath the Jerusalem panorama at the same table from which he had first lobbied his peers to resume talks nine months earlier, Abbas declared to a roomful of officials and VIPs that “the Palestinian leadership has unanimously approved a decision to seek membership of fifteen U.N. conventions and international treaties.”

“This is our right,” he continued.“All we get from the Israeli government is talk.” As Abbas took out his pen to sign the U.N. conventions, with Erekat at his side, the room gave him a standing ovation.

Earlier that afternoon, while Abbas and Erekat were watching the clock at the muqata, Netanyahu sat in his office, taking meeting after meeting. First, he would invite in Livni and Kerry’s team to discuss the coalescing Pollard-for-prisoners-for-talks deal. Then, he would bring in a group of pro-settler politicians led by Housing Minister Uri Ariel to calm their nerves about the impending settlement freeze. Wow, Ariel thought each time he passed Livni in the doorway, it’s like we’re doing shifts.

Livni was pressing Netanyahu for an immediate vote on the deal. “Everything is ready,” she said, “just get the ministers here.” Netanyahu, however, was working with Kerry on an exchange of letters that would make everything official. Kerry, meanwhile, was waiting on White House approval of a single paragraph—the Pollard paragraph. But Rice’s staff was still engaged in frantic negotiations with Israeli officials over the particulars: when Pollard would go free, where he could travel, what he could say. Though Netanyahu had promised Kerry the night before that he would hold the vote today, he had told Kerry and Indyk earlier that morning that he wanted to wait one more to prepare Israeli public opinion. Indyk was incredulous. “Mr. Prime Minister,” he said, “you are playing with fire.”

The Israeli right was also in rebellion mode, with Likud officials vowing to resign and Bennett again threatening to leave the government if the fourth tranche was released. As Netanyahu pressed the merits of the extension deal to Ariel and his hard-right allies during one of their shifts, one of his aides entered the room: “Mr. Prime Minister, Abu Mazen has just signed fifteen U.N. conventions.” Netanyahu froze. For years, he had feared that the Palestinians might join the International Criminal Court and lodge war-crimes charges against Israeli officials. “Which conventions?” he asked. After several minutes of confusion, one of the people in the room managed to locate a list. Chuckling, he told the others that the Palestinians—the Palestinians—had signed the anti-corruption charter. The room burst into laughter.

Erekat, who for months had been urging Abbas to blow up the talks, was as giddy as the settlers. That night, Indyk summoned Erekat to the U.S. Consul-General’s home in Jerusalem. The moment the Palestinian negotiator walked in the door, Indyk began yelling. “Don’t act surprised, Martin,” Erekat said, grinning. “You told me nine times in four days that the prisoners were about to be released.” (The Americans dispute Erekat’s number, claiming that they had told the Palestinians the prisoner-release vote was imminent only three or four times.) Indyk asked Erekat when the U.N. letters of accession would be submitted. He replied that the local U.N. representative would receive them the following morning at nine. “Please delay it,” Indyk said. “Just for twenty-four hours, hold it back.”

While Erekat and Indyk were going back and forth, Erekat’s phone rang. It was Livni. “OK,” she said, “so you had your little show. Now hold back the documents. We have a deal to extend the talks. The prisoners can go out in forty-eight hours, and then we can get to substance. Don’t destroy this.” Erekat told her that he was with the Americans and would have to call back. The following morning, he sent her a text message. “It’s a done deal,” he wrote. “We just handed in the documents.”

Over the next three weeks, with April 29 approaching, Indyk would meet nine times with Livni, Molho, Erekat, and Faraj in a bid to salvage the peace talks. He was determined to get everything in writing this time. No more misunderstandings. And by April 23, the sides seemed close to an extension agreement. Indyk drove to Ben Gurion Airport that day to pick up his wife, and while at the baggage claim, he got a call from Livni. She’d heard that the Palestinians had just done something to ruin all the progress they had made. Indyk immediately phoned Erekat, who said he wasn’t aware of the development, but would investigate. Back at the U.S. consulate, the Kerry team was combing over the details of the emerging deal, with the secretary calling periodically to check in. Soon, the news penetrated their office, too. Weeks earlier, they had been surprised by the timing of Abu Mazen’s U.N. ceremony, but not by the act. The Palestinians had put them on notice. But as the American officials huddled around a desktop computer, hungry for actual details about this rumor they were hearing, they couldn’t believe the headline that now flashed across the screen: FATAH, HAMAS END YEARS OF DIVISON, AGREE TO UNITY GOVERNMENT.The next day, the Israeli Cabinet had voted to suspend the talks. John Kerry’s peace process was over.

VI.

Since the talks collapsed three months ago, Kerry’s warning about a third intifada has looked far more prescient. There was the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, followed by the revenge killing of a young Palestinian. Hamas and its allies have fired more than a thousand rockets at Israeli towns and cities, including Tel Aviv. Israeli airstrikes against Hamas targets in Gaza have killed more than 200. Riots have spread from the West Bank to East Jerusalem to Arab towns in Israel’s north. As this magazine went to press, an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire between Israel and Hamas had collapsed, and Israel appeared poised for a ground invasion.

Meanwhile, several of the peace process’s most important figures are taking their leave. Peres will retire on July 27 after 66 years in Israeli politics (replaced by one of the two-state solution’s fiercest opponents). In his final weeks, the Israeli president has repeatedly called Abbas a partner for peace while being more circumspect about Netanyahu. “I respect some of the things he did, and I speak about those publicly,” he said at a conference days ago. “Other things I don't agree with, and about that I'll be able to speak in a few weeks when I retire.”

Abbas, who joined Peres at a recent Vatican prayer ceremony for Middle East peace—when U.S. diplomacy fails, there’s always God—has also been looking for a dignified exit. In June, he swore in the new Fatah-Hamas government, which was to serve for a short while until new elections, though the current crisis has put them on hold.

Back in the United States, Indyk became the latest Middle East envoy to resign. “I came into this very skeptical,“ Indyk said a few days before returning to his job at the Brookings Institution. “But I was so impressed with the secretary’s enthusiasm that I decided to suspend my disbelief.”

Recounting the history of the Kerry effort, he sounded almost wistful. “We definitely tested the proposition that American in­volvement, creativity, high-level engagement with the leaders, intensive negotiations—all of the things the U.S. can bring to the table—could achieve peace,” said Indyk. “And it wasn't enough.”

Nearly everyone we interviewed felt the same way: that Kerry was absolutely correct to attempt a deal. The outlines were clear; the cost of inaction too great. “I always tell American secretaries of state that you get points for trying,” said Tony Blair, now a Middle East envoy. But they also believed that, for any agreement to be reached in the future, something major, something fundamental would have to change—the leaders, the American approach, the terms of reference, the external pressures.

So, what is next? The Palestinians may resume their quest for full-fledged U.N. membership this fall. In Israel, there are almost as many plans as people: Lieberman, the foreign minister, wants his country to make peace directly with the Arab League; Bennett, whose party is now polling just behind Likud, is advocating partial Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Livni has spoken about unilateral steps that would forfeit Israeli claims to West Bank territory outside the settlement blocs and freeze building in those areas.

In the United States, top Middle East voices are urging Kerry to bypass Abbas and Netanyahu and put forward his own detailed peace plan. “It would set U.S. policy on a sound basis,” said former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer. “After forty-seven years of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and sixty-six years of its independence, we would finally have a view with respect to how the conflict comes to an end. To back away in anticipation of failure is unlike anything we do anywhere else in the world.”

There's no shortage of ideas, in other words. And some of them—particularly that last—may bring Israelis and Palestinians closer to a deal than Kerry got this time. But few of the people we spoke to expected progress any time soon. With Netanyahu entrenched, Abbas on his way out, settlements and rocket ranges expanding, and the populations increasingly hardline, we seem to have reached the end of an era in the peace process. And no one harbors much hope for what comes next.

“I see it from a mathematical point of view,” said Avi Dichter, the former chief of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency. “The American effort will always be multiplied by the amount of trust between the two leaders. So if Kerry's pressure represents the number five, and then Obama's help brings the American effort to ten, it really doesn't matter. You’re still multiplying it by zero. The final result will always be zero.”



Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to a member of John Kerry's team as "Blumenthal." It's Blumenfeld.