Read more: Senior ministers to convene as Israel fumes over Palestinian pact | The Times of Israel

With events and pressures always there to provide for ready abrogation and likely termination of whatever process is currently in train, it comes as no surprise that the present US-Israeli-Palestinian drive for peace has apparently reached the stage of imploding in upon itself. Like so many others that have gone before, time and tide have dealt harshly with this latest addition to the ranks of what were such promising initiatives.

What reasons can be divined, what lessons learned are much the same as those for all past examples of the genre. Neither side can commit to peace without mortally offending certain important sections of its people, be they of the political, religious, nationalist or just bloody-minded variety. Or those too frightened and timid to risk new ventures, new dangers.

And so the world must await the next variant in peace proposals that will, no doubt, eventually surface but, perhaps, to even less acclaim and confidence of outcome than that of Mr. Kerry’s ill-fated adventure.

Have the past nine months been yet another waste of valuable time, a fishing expedition in which not even the smallest minnow has been netted? Not entirely. It has cleared the decks once again of unwarranted optimism and unrealistic expectation. This, in itself, is a move in the right direction. We know today what does not work, what can never succeed in accomplishing the task facing us.

But does that mean we now know what will?

Www.laxiankey.com – ‘ for those of us with better things to do.’

 As with some arguments, certain ‘armaments’ can be quite convincing.