In recent interviews, he has talked of a 57-state solution, embracing peace between Israel and all the Arab and Muslim world. But that figure includes Iran—which has charted its own very different and confrontational course. The core framework for peace, in fact, is the Arab Initiative first put forth by Saudi Arabia and adopted unanimously seven years ago by 22 states, from Morocco on the Atlantic to Oman on the Indian Ocean. But the fact is, just getting Israel's immediate neighbors to negotiate in earnest is going to be difficult. Syria is still closely allied to Tehran. Lebanon is always fractious: elections there next month are likely to make Hizbullah more powerful than ever in the Beirut government. 

And the Palestinians—well, the Palestinians are deeply, bitterly, violently divided. Should the Israelis try to make peace with Gaza, where Hamas still rules? Or should the Israelis try to make peace with the West Bank, where the government of Mahmoud Abbas has a long history of good-faith negotiations? The official Palestinian position on all sides is that the two pieces of land are politically inseparable. But no amount of Saudi or Egyptian pressure has been able to bring them together thus far. And the ferocious Israeli military incursion into Gaza last January, which left the West Bank untouched, only made matters worse.

And, oh yes, then there's the problem of terrorist attacks expressly designed to derail this peace initiative just as they've derailed so many before.

So, we don't know if Abdullah and Kerry listened to music as they roared along the Dead Sea shore. People of a certain age tend to recall lines from the old movie "Easy Rider" at such moments. The best known was Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild." But the most appropriate for the moment came from a group called The Blues Magoos. It was called "(We Ain't Got) Nothing Yet."

© 2009