Time, we are told, heals all wounds. In the Middle East, despite repeated wars and long-standing grievances, time somehow appeared to be on the side of peace. If some weeks went by without bombs and bloodshed, it seemed -- if only briefly -- a bit more like peace than war.

Anwar Sadat negotiated the return of occupied Egyptian territory and took his armed forces off the Middle East board. King Hussein was a soft-spoken peacemaker. His borders were easy to reconcile with those of Israel. If all the other ducks were lined up, Hafez Assad might have made a deal on the Golan Heights.

For a time, things were going reasonably well for the PLO. The 1993 Oslo Agreement seemed to provide the road map in peace. Much remained to be negotiated, but peace was ahead -- or so it seemed. For Arafat, peace would mean a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders of Gaza and the West Bank.

It is one thing to negotiate with a sovereign state and agree to revert to a previously recognized border. It is another thing to negotiate with an assemblage of people over pieces of land that are deemed indispensable, even sacred, to the parties at the table.

Both the Israelis and the Palestinians profess the non-negotiable right to sovereignty over the lands in dispute. Israel continues to assert its historic claim to establish Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The Palestinians retain in their charter the principle of the destruction of Israel.

The participants were locked into a dialogue with no convenient safe exit. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin rather reluctantly entered the negotiation process. He knew his own country was bitterly divided over whether to agree to anything akin to a Palestinian nation using the 1967 borders.

Rabin doubted if he could develop a unity of purpose within his nation. His assassination denied him even the slim opportunity to try. No successor -- neither Shimon Peres nor Benjamin Netanyahu -- could pull it off, Peres had the will, but not the domestic political clout. Netanyahu's heart was not really interested in a process that spelled internal political peril for him.

Arafat, the great survivor, was flexible. Flexibility and unreliability are his strong suits. He publicly embraced the Islamic terrorists. He warmly hugged a leader of Hamas and applauded others who were set on the destruction of the peace process and the destruction of Israel itself.

Arafat now realizes that he can get only bits and pieces of landscape in the West Bank and even that meager turf would not be recognized as a nation state by Netanyahu.

He and Hamas are only of temporary use to each other. The terrorists would just as soon be rid of a PLO leaders they perceive as too willing to conceded the permanency of a Jewish sovereignty in the midst of the Arab world. Arafat keeps looking over his shoulder to see if any of his new-found friends are creeping closer to his backside.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made her obligatory trip to the Mideast. Her predecessor, Warren Christopher, went there incessantly as a permanent handholder. Albright believes that Christopher's constant access did breed a benign contempt. So this recent visit will, absent incipient disaster, be her last for some time.

Albright realizes that the Middle East will not be solved on her watch. She has enough worrisome items on her plate without diverting her energies trying to solve an issue that cannot be solved. She is saying, "Listen, boys, I am a busy woman. I don't have time to run out here and hold hands and give endless pep talks. If you want to maintain this permanently unstable status quo, have at it. However, if you both decide to get serious about pursuing peace, then I'm available." She wants the parties to behave as "necessary partners", a quantum leap under existing circumstances.

Where does all of this leave the world? Peace in the Middle East is no closer than in the pre-Oslo era. There are neither the leaders or the proposals to craft a peace of trustworthy acceptance. There is even a risk that with the conflict perceived as intractable, and now that there is no prospect of superpower confrontation over the issue, the Arab-Israeli dispute will recede from the world agenda and be left to deteriorate indefinitely.

If Israel builds new settlements or performs some other act of provocation, terroristic retaliation is assured. There is an ample supply of suicidal bomb runners. Netanyahu may do his best to play a cool hand, but a large portion of his political support does not favor fruitful negotiations. Indeed, the prime minister just announced that he would build 200 new homes for settlers and vowed that the Jewish presence in the West Bank would grow.

Absent the will and the way, we once again pray for time in the Mideast. That is all that we have going for us. That has been the history of the Middle East for more than half a century.

~Tom Eagleton of St. Louis is a former U.S. senator from Missouri.