As almost 50 delegations assembled for the Annapolis conference on Tuesday, one question stood out. Why was the Bush administration, which had once scorned Bill Clinton’s efforts to broker Middle East peace, risking a high-profile attempt of its own, despite near to rock bottom expectations?

“You can make the case that in an attempt to shoot the moon and get nothing, more violence resulted,” Ari Fleischer, then President George W. Bush’s spokesman, said in 2002 of Mr Clinton’s Camp David negotiations two years before.