A long and winding road.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Realists understand two things about the situation in the Middle East right now: Substantive progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations is next to impossible at the moment; and the United States must refuse to allow that fact to be an excuse for either side to walk away from efforts to bridge the chasm that lies between them.

Palestinians have just stepped back from the brink of civil war, but it wouldn't take much for the tension between Hamas and Fatah to once again erupt into violence. Israeli politics is only slightly less chaotic, with widespread scandal and corruption plaguing public officials and lingering dissatisfaction with last summer's invasion of Lebanon undercutting support for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Even worse, ordinary Palestinians and Israelis are exhausted by the violence and beginning to despair that their leaders are capable of finding a way out of the endless conflict.

What's the point of pretending that Israel can ever find common ground with Hamas, which remains unwilling to recognize the Jewish state or to renounce violence? What hope can Palestinians hold out for an independent state while Israel brazenly expands illegal settlements and continues to steal Palestinian land?

In the face of these seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week did the one thing she could to signal to Israelis, Palestinians and the world that the United States refuses to give up on the prospects for peace in the Middle East: She showed up for a trilateral summit in Israel that she knew ahead of time wasn't going anywhere.

A Saudi Arabia-brokered agreement between Hamas and Fatah that enabled a framework for a Palestinian unity government dramatically complicated Rice's scheduled summit to jump-start peace talks. The Mecca Agreement helped end fighting between Hamas and Fatah that had killed more than 100 Palestinians, but it did not include acceptance of the principles established by the international community, including that Hamas renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.

Olmert thought the Mecca Agreement made a summit meaningless, and he proposed postponing it. But Rice insisted that he and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas follow through with plans to meet.

For her perseverance, Rice received little more than a migraine. Abbas and Olmert traded charges and countercharges, and Rice was forced to stand alone before the news media at the end of the unproductive session to read a joint statement that said nothing.

In the short run, progress toward peace will have to be measured in millimeters. The most important elements Rice and the United States can bring to the negotiations right now are patience and stamina. Israelis and Palestinians are running out of both.

Rice's refusal to abandon an opportunity to bring Olmert and Abbas together reminds Israelis and Palestinians that the United States hasn't abandoned its commitment to peace and to an independent Palestinian state.

While it's tempting to write the Jerusalem summit off as another exercise in futility, that would be ignoring the other painful truth of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The only thing worse than the sound of silence at the negotiating table is the sound of gunfire and human suffering in the streets.

Giving up on one guarantees the other.