Initially, Monday's summit meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Jerusalem was billed as an effort to get long-stalled peace talks back on track. But by the time the two leaders actually came together with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday morning in a drab hotel conference room, expectations had been ratcheted down so low that even the handshake photo-op has to be seen as a positive outcome.

Indeed, Rice, who spent Sunday shuttling between the two sides in preparation for the meeting, referred to the three-way meeting as "informal discussions" on Sunday. "I expect to have conversations that are at a pace to allow real discussion and not to try to drive some outcome," Rice told reporters travelling with her. "If you ask people to run at this point, I think somebody is going to fall down, and that's probably not a good thing."

The lowered expectations largely reflect the current political realities in the Middle East. On Tuesday last week, the two Palestinian political groups Hamas and Fatah agreed to set aside months of feuding -- which had resulted in 90 deaths in recent weeks -- and form a unity government. But the agreement they reached fell far short of what Israel and the US had been hoping for: It did not explicitly recognize Israel's right to exist and only said it would "respect" previous peace deals.

Abbas, who heads up Fatah, said it was the best he could do under the circumstances and that the agreement, reached in Mecca in Saudi Arabia last week, took steps toward moderating Hamas. The Hamas victory in general elections in January 2006 led to international aid boycotts that have crippled the Palestinian economy.

Israel, though, said that there could be no peace deal were the Palestinians not to meet three criteria: the recognition of Israel, the renouncing of violence and the acceptance of previous agreements with Israel. "The moderates on the Palestinian side need to understand that the path toward a Palestinian state goes through the renunciation of violence and terrorism and not by compromising with terror," Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said on Saturday. Both the US and Israel consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization.

But while Abbas's hands are tied by Hamas, Israel's hands are tied by the extreme unpopularity of its government. Prime Minister Olmert's approval ratings are below 20 percent, leaving him little room to offer the Palestinians any compromises at all. His clumsy handling of the summer 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon have opened him up to considerable criticism this winter, and his head of military Dan Halutz resigned  in January amid calls for Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz to step down as well.

Apparently reacting to the hard-line stance Israel adopted ahead of the Monday meeting, a senior Abbas aide told the Associated Press: "The meeting, which was initiated by the Americans, will be no more than a photo opportunity. We hoped the meeting could revive peace talks in a serious manner, but the Israelis will do whatever they can to make it fail."

Rice in recent weeks has made a number of visits to the Middle East as the United States has rediscovered the Palestinian peace process as a potential key to regional peace and stability. Seemingly aware of the difficulties generations of diplomats have encountered in tackling the long-standing problems between Israel and the Palestinians, Rice over the weekend was hardly optimistic.

"I don't believe this is going to be done in one meeting," she said in an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz. "I don't even assume that we are going to come to a common view of what needs to be discussed in this initial meeting, but one thing that the people can be certain of, (is) that I don't intend to give up."

But the United States too, as the third member of these three-party talks, is likewise in a bit of a diplomatic bind. The US cashed in much of its diplomatic influence in the region with its botched handling of Iraq and much of its attention is focused there, as well as in Afghanistan and Iran. Still, many observers believe that any movement toward a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians could have a positive effect on the entire region.

"Of course (Palestinian-Israeli peace) won't bring peace to Iraq," Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor under both President Gerald Ford and President George H. W. Bush and a close friend of the Bush family, told Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung on Monday.