Palestinians and Israelis have warned how difficult it will be to implement the road map for a peace agreement between them, following its publication this week. A suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv bar which killed three people, followed by a lethal Israeli raid on Hamas targets in Gaza, killing 12 people, immediately demonstrated what has to stop if progress is to be made.
International pressure can certainly make a difference, but unless it is more than matched by Israeli and Palestinian willingness to give the road map a chance, it will be stillborn.
The plan sets out detailed tasks, timetables and phasing for both sides. The Palestinians are called on to cease violent resistance and incitement, develop security co-operation with the Israelis and reorganise their police and security structures. This is the first major task facing Mr Mahmoud Abbas, the new prime minister whose appointment this week triggered off the process. Simultaneously the Israelis are to withdraw from Palestinian areas occupied from September 28th 2000, freeze all settlement activity and immediately dismantle settlement posts erected since March 2001. They are also to cease deportations, attacks on property and homes, confiscations and targeted assassinations. The Palestinians are to undertake comprehensive political reform in preparation for statehood, including drafting a constitution and holding free and fair elections. In the second phase, international negotiations on a two-state solution would commence, and would be concluded by 2005 in a third one.
This is an ambitious agenda, backed up by a formidable range of international political force through the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia - the so-called Quartet who negotiated it last year. Their plan was delayed by the US refusal to publish it before Israeli elections and until the appointment of Mr Abbas as prime minister, which it was assumed would sideline Mr Yasser Arafat and undermine his apparatus.
Now that the end of the Iraq war has been proclaimed by President Bush it is crucial for the credibility of US policy in the Middle East that it delivers on the promise of the Quartet plan. This will require difficult decisions and commitments. His administration is so close to Mr Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, that a radical shift of US policy will be required to mount sufficient pressure on Israel so to reach an equitable settlement.Sceptics doubt whether it will be mounted coming into a US election year.
Mr Sharon has made his opposition to a comprehensive peace settlement altogether clear - and his coalition with settlement parties would probably collapse if it is broached. As for the Palestinians, Mr Abbas has not supplanted Mr Arafat's political authority or popularity. He faces a huge task in facing down his opponents and constructing a new Palestinian Authority. It will be miraculous if real progress is made towards a settlement in these circumstances. But it is nevertheless worth the effort.