"Weakness is the name of the new game," said former Israeli justice minister Yossi Beilin at a recent forum in Washington, to assess the current stagnation of high-level peace talks.

"In Lebanon you have Fouad Siniora who is a weak prime minister. In Palestine you have (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas), who is confronting a government of Hamas and is considered by everybody -- maybe including himself -- as a weak leader," he said. "A new member of this club of weakness is (Israeli Prime Minister) Ehud Olmert."

After hostilities broke out between Israel and and Palestinian militants in Gaza following the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in June, Olmert and members of his Cabinet were accused of mishandling a subsequent war against Hezbollah that yielded paltry results. The Shiite militia survived in tact, while vast swathes of Lebanon were destoryed and public opinion in Israel soured.

Since Israel's military offensive resumed in Gaza, around 350 Palestinians have been killed -- about half of them civilians -- and four Israelis, three of them soldiers, have been killed. Qassam rocket fire from Gaza last week killed one woman and wounded two others in the southern town of Sderot and sporadic launches continue.

Noting that the apparent lack of strong leadership has allowed the situation to unravel, Beilin nonetheless argued present leaders may have an advantage over their predecessors.

"One may say that strong people can take (peace negotiations) upon themselves. But, maybe a weak leader can do it because he has much less to lose," he said. "How can we convince this club of weak leaders to move towards peace? It might be their chance for legacy, for strengthening themselves politically."

Beilin, an architect of the Oslo Peace Accords, was also highly critical of boycotting tactics employed by the United States against Syria and Iran.

"What is the wisdom of boycotting? What is the wisdom of not having an ambassador? What is the wisdom of not talking?" Beilin asked. He went on to cite secret negotiations directed by then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker in 1981 that established an 11-month cease-fire between Israel and PLO forces in Lebanon.

With the current strategy of isolating regimes opposed by the United States and Israel, Beilin suggested there is a missed opportunity to negotiate even a temporary peace.

"We lost in the administration this ability, despite being the only superpower in the world today," he said. "It (the United States) in many ways neutralized its own power by boycotting so many forces in the world that when we need mediation, we have to get other third parties in this world because the Americans are not available."

Judith Kipper, a Mideast specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, finds that the lack of U.S. engagement in a peace process remains the primary obstacle.

"This administration has been reluctant to get involved in negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians ... especially when Americans are dying in Iraq. They are very distracted and have let this slip," Kipper told United Press International.

Kipper recommended the Bush administration "use full persuasive powers of the U.S. to get this done." Even in light of the current surge of violence in the Middle East, she called a U.S.-sponsored negotiation process "utterly do-able."

Beilin, for his part, called for a second round of negotiations modeled after the Madrid Conference of 1991.

"The wisdom of Madrid I was that in the conference itself there were no votes taken, and there was no real debate ... It was a media event. But everything had been agreed upon before in the invitation letter ... Everybody knew exactly what was expected in the conference," Beilin said.

The conference, co-sponsored by the United States and the former Soviet Union, brought together government representatives from Israel, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Palestinians attended as part of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation.

Beilin posits that a Madrid-style international conference held today would be especially conducive to improving Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Syrian relations.

"I think that we can try and repeat the same logic, write the right invitations, deal with the parties and see whether it is possible to have such a conference in order to launch a process of negotiation in the region," he said.

Other experts were more skeptical.

"Madrid is a nice window dressing. If (a Madrid II) would help to improve the atmosphere, make people feel more included, it's a good thing. But in and of itself (Madrid I) accomplished nothing," Council's Kipper said.

Instead, she recommended current players take another look at the final settlement ideas that emerged during former U.S. President Bill Clinton's diplomacy efforts of 2000 and the culminating Taba summit in January 2001.

Nabil Abuznaid, deputy chief of the Palestinian Liberation Organization Mission, similarly doubted the merits of a second round Madrid conference. He cited preconditions for Madrid I, which included a threat from then-President George Bush to withdraw aid from Israel if Israel did not agree to the conference.

"The conditions today are different," Abuznaid told UPI. "Olmert knows that there may be stipulations which he does not want to agree to. He knows that the mood in the whole world and even in the U.S. is that there should be a two-state solution."

He suggested, however, that a media event modeled after the Madrid I could "break the ice," and lead to more meaningful negotiations. "You need to start somewhere," Abuznaid said.

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