Word: truce
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...think they wanted to be here. They would argue that this is not squandering political capital, as they accused President Clinton of doing, but a legitimate investment of political capital in sustaining a fragile truce, because if it fails the next one may be a long time coming. This is the next logical step after brokering the cease-fire. Still, they're leery of getting stuck, and they'll try to do as little as they can get away with. The fact that they're not plunging in is an improvement, in their view, over the previous administration...
TIME.com: Why is Secretary of State Colin Powell returning to the Middle East when the prospects for the U.S.-brokered truce still look pretty shaky...
...truce were to hold, it would create a political crisis for the leadership on both sides, since that would force them back to the negotiating table in search of a long-term peace agreement - and the differences between them today are a lot sharper than they were when the Camp David peace talks collapsed last summer...
...Neither side is particularly positive about the prospects for the cease-fire - their demeanor speaks of a truce imposed from the outside by an international community concerned to keep a lid on the crisis. As the Economist put it, this is a "peace of the truculent." Both sides are accusing the other of failing to do their bit (the Palestinians are not arresting Hamas and Islamic Jihad members; the Israelis have not comprehensively lifted their closure of Palestinian areas) and warning that time is running...
...course, they may not make it back to the negotiating table just yet. The current cease fire leaves the initiative in the hands of the naysayers. Although the truce is surviving one day at a time despite a steady daily death toll in minor clashes, all it would take to rekindle the blaze would be one suicide bombing in a crowded Israeli marketplace, or one settler zealot emptying his weapon into a crowd of Palestinians. And that's a serious concern, since there are substantial militant constituencies on both sides who have no interest in seeing the cease-fire hold...