George W. Bush has reserved the last of his eight years in the White House for his first official visit to Israel, America’s principal ally in the Middle East. Billed as follow-up to the relaunch late last year of peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, this trip, which takes in Egypt and the Gulf, already looks much less than the sum of its parts.

The president, long wary of entanglement in peacemaking after Bill Clinton’s failure at Camp David in 2000, now says a deal is possible this year. Yet the parties in conflict do not appear to believe this.