The first thing to say about U.S. President George W. Bush's travels around the region to push the cause of an Israeli-Palestinian peace is that it is extremely welcome: The second thing to say is that it would have been much more welcome had it occurred seven years ago, before 3,000 to 5,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis had lost their lives during the second intifada.

At long last, Bush has gotten around to visiting the region. He has even promised to make a second visit in May. And, at long last, the president has spoken out against the expansion of Israeli settlement building. This too is a long overdue and most welcome development.

Unfortunately, once we applaud this president as a sinner come to repentance on the peace process, we have exhausted our meager store of optimism and praise for his latest policies.

For the harsh, unrelenting, unfortunate truth is the new Bush-Rice peace push has come too little, too late. Had it come seven years ago it would certainly have saved thousands of lives. It would also have come when U.S. military and diplomatic prestige in the region were still at their height, and before they were both squandered in the catastrophic Iraq war and occupation.

A peace process launched in 2001 or 2002 would have come while President Muhammad Khatami, a genuine moderate in the politics of his nation, was president of Iran and eager to cut a deal with the United States. It would have come when Syria still keenly felt its military weakness vis-à-vis Israel, and before Syria began to receive any of the formidable Iskander high accuracy ballistic missiles from Russia that it now has.

Such a peace process would also have come while Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization still ruled effectively in Gaza as well as the West Bank. It would have come before Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, had taken over Gaza to hold it in an iron grip and before Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat's successor as Palestinian Authority president, was reduced to a political lame duck.

It would certainly have come while Ariel Sharon was still at the height of his own formidable powers as prime minister of Israel and, as Sharon showed during the 2005 Gaza evacuation, when Israel had a prime minister who, whatever else he might be accused of, certainly had the capability, the political clout and the iron will to enforce such evacuations of settlers from settlements beyond the 1967 Green Line. Such qualities unfortunately cannot be confidently attributed to his successor, current Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The new peace process comes when Bush too is an increasingly lame duck with only a year left in office, and when even the international credit rating of the U.S. government and the long almighty dollar is crumbling alarmingly. U.S. clout in the region is arguably lower than it has been since Jimmy Carter's last year in the White House.

And so we hear the sound of one hand clapping for a U.S. peace drive that could and should have been launched six or seven years ago, and which has virtually little hope of succeeding.