George Mitchell, the US Middle East envoy, is dangerously close to going the way of so many others who have tried to mediate between the Palestinians and Israelis.

It was hoped that Mitchell would arrive in Ramallah Friday with something to rescue the Palestinian leadership from the doldrums that it has found itself in ever since the PLO accepted the UN to defer a vote on the Goldstone report on alleged war crimes during Israel’s brutal offensive on Gaza earlier this year.

But Mitchell came empty-handed. He had failed to convince the Israelis to freeze their illegal settlement building in occupied territory and, with the Palestinian leadership in a corner, could not expect anyone on that side to accept to engage in direct negotiations with the Israelis under those circumstances.

All Mitchell offered was a resumption of what is, in effect, more shuttle diplomacy on a lower level with officials from both sides expected to go to Washington later this month.

This is a deeply disappointing state of affairs, not least in view of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to President Barack Obama for the promise he represents of a more peaceful world. That promise, unfortunately, is foundering on the insistence by Israel not to abide by international law and international legality.

How long will it take for the world to realise that the problem, the single greatest obstacle to peace in the Middle East, is not Palestinian weakness, it is not Islamic extremism nor is it Arab rejectionism?

It is the world’s failure to make Israel abide by the laws that otherwise is supposed to inform international relations that is to blame. It is the victory of narrow interests over the common good, particularly in domestic American politics, that is to blame.

How difficult can it be? The world’s only superpower guarantees Israel’s security. The very least it can do, for Israel and the region, is at the same time guarantee that that security does not come at the expense of international law, without which this world would be a much scarier place than it already is.

That Israel can hold the world hostage to its whims and greed, that it can without much effort reject US pressure to even end its construction in settlements, much less revert this illegal colonisation project, bodes ill for the perception of American diplomacy and prospects for peace.