Surveying the wreckage of the Middle East's last big push for peace in January 2001, Israel's then-prime minister Ehud Barak said something that turned out to be prophetic:
"In a few years, we will bury our hundreds of dead and they will bury their thousands of dead, and we will go back to the negotiating table, and we will face the same issues."
After about 1,000 days of fighting, 2,416 are dead on the Palestinian side, 807 on the Israeli side, and the issues are no closer to resolution. If there is any hope at all, it is for an end to the current round of fighting and a deepening recognition on both sides that neither can get everything it wants.
The "road map" to peace pushed by the Bush administration has yielded its first concrete results. Palestinian militants agreed to suspend attacks, Israeli troops began easing their hold on Palestinians, and leaders of both sides shared a platform in a startling display of bonhomie.
Nael Qassem, a Palestinian engineer in the Gaza Strip, was able to commute to work in 25 minutes last week, instead of spending hours getting through Israeli checkpoints. In Tel Aviv, economist Eli Palotinsky took heart from a stock market that has anticipated US President George W. Bush's intervention by shooting up 40 percent in recent months.
The road map has broad international backing, including for the first time by the Arab world, which contributed to the collapse of the 2001 talks by staying on the sidelines. Also, Iraq, perhaps Israel's most formidable foe under former president Saddam Hussein, has been neutralized, and US clout in the region is at a high as a result.
What hope there is for this latest effort comes with strong doses of dread and skepticism. But even though Israel's army chief and Hamas each claimed victory, more Israelis and Palestinians are now persuaded that there is no winner and that they must divide the land between them.
The intifada has made many Israelis realize that hanging on to the West Bank and Gaza Strip comes with a high price -- terror and recession -- and that giving the Palestinians independence is not an act of generosity, but the key to Israel's survival as a Jewish state.
Barak had offered such a state already three years ago, but with little domestic support. Now, most Israelis would happily settle for such a deal, if they could be convinced their security was assured.
The Palestinians emerged with a sense of national dignity; they had pushed a far more powerful opponent as hard as they could. But Israel didn't break, making many Palestinians realize they will have to make concessions -- for example, by giving up the demand that their refugee brethren be allowed to reclaim homes they abandoned or lost when Israel became a state in 1948.
After 33 months of attack and counterattack, the Palestinian militants blinked first, calling a unilateral truce. But Israel -- unable to stop the suicide bombings despite massive military campaigns -- has also discovered the limits of force.
The Palestinians have won unprecedented international backing for their claim to statehood, along with a detailed US plan on how to establish it within two years, but they now face Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, from whom they will likely get less than Barak offered.
Both sides seem eager for a break, if not an end, to the fighting.
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