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TEL AVIV — Senator George Mitchell recently concluded yet another unsuccessful bid to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. President Barack Obama acknowledged that he had underestimated the difficulties in Jerusalem and Ramallah and had failed to move the parties forward.

Mr. Obama correctly noted that both Israeli and Palestinian leaders had proven intractable. But if he and Mr. Mitchell think that simply applying “more of the same” blandishments and minor pressures in the coming year will break the logjam, they are still underestimating the difficulties. Neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel nor the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, really want a peace process right now, if only because neither is politically capable of “delivering.”...