United States Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is on another of her whistle-stop tours through the Middle East. While the trip is designed to drum up support for President George W. Bush's new Iraq strategy, it is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was the first issue on her agenda.

Rice met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday before traveling to Jordan to meet with King Abdullah. Abbas told the secretary of state that he rejected recent Israeli suggestions for a temporary Palestinian state. "We don't see it as a realistic option," he said.

After the meeting Rice told reporters she rejected suggestions that the US had become so embroiled in Iraq that it was failing to have an impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "The establishment of a Palestinian state should be pursued on its own merits," she said. "Not because of anything else -- not because of Iran, not because of Iraq, not because of anything."

Rice went on to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday, and afterwards Israeli officials announced that Rice, Olmert and Abbas are to meet at a three-way summit at some stage in the future. She is also visiting Egypt, Saudia Arabia and Kuwait.

While Rice said that she had heard "loud and clear" the calls from Arab leaders for more US engagement in the conflict, it seems that there are few new ideas coming from Washington.

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung wonders what the point is of yet another trip to the Middle East:

"The region doesn’t need yet another picture of Rice with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Instead it needs new ideas, about how Abbas and his Fatah movement can win the power struggle against Hamas and how Olmert can be persuaded to give concessions to the Palestinians."

"Obviously the US government lacks the will or the imagination to lift the blockade in the Middle East. Rice inflexibly attested to the validity of the current roadmap. But neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis have begun implementing the first phase of the plan. The Palastinians continue to use violence against Israel and Israel continues unperturbed to expand the Jewish settlements."

"Today 275,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, which the Palestinians want for their own state. When the roadmap was signed, there were 30,000 fewer settlers there. The roadmap has long gone the way of all the previously plans -- it's gathering dust in a drawer."

Conservative daily Die Welt features a guest commentary by the Israeli academic Barry Rubin:

"The Hamas parliamentary victory in January was due to three main factors: First Arafat bequeathed a complete lack of discipline to Fatah. Second, Fatah never offered the Palestinians alternative prospects for the future. Peace and compromise were never accepted … and third, Fatah was terrible at governing. There was massive corruption and administrative incompetence, coupled with breath-taking arrogance."

"The West believes in the chance of an Arab-Israeli peace and that this is the fundamental problem in the region, that Hamas can become more moderate and the Fatah can form a national unity government with it."

"The Palestinian politicians prefer total victory and the destruction of Israel rather than admitting to themselves that this goal is unachievable, that terrorism has to be renounced and public order must be re-established."

The irony of the situation is that real change will only be brought about through a civil war in which the moderates win. But the Palestinians are not involved in a civil war between moderates and extremists. The reciprocal violence between Hamas and Fatah is nothing more than a power struggle fuelled by greed … the Palestinians won't stop fighting each other or Israel."

The business daily Handelsblatt comments on the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians in the context of an editorial on Bush's new Iraq strategy and its implications for the region.

"The US government is upping the ante in the Middle East. What originally had been announced as just a new Iraq strategy increasingly appears to be the prelude to a massive confrontation with Iran."

"Bush has categorically rejected all calls for approaching Iran and Syria -- as recommended by the Iraq Study Group -- to help stabilize Iraq and to look for a solution to the Middle East conflict. He has turned the tables: Success in Iraq is only possible if the 'extremist challenges' in the region are thwarted, and that begins with the isolation of Iran and Syria."

"The Europeans and the US government have completely different interpretations of reasons for the conflicts in the Middle East. For the Europeans the ongoing struggle between Israel and the Palestinians is central. This can quickly lead to war like the Lebanon conflict in summer 2006, and offers dictatorial politicians an emotionally charged platform from which to present themselves as champions of Arabs and Muslim."

"Bush sees things completely differently: For him the decisive ideological struggle of our time is being fought in the Middle East. The forces of freedom stand on one side and the extremists stand on the other. There is little room for political solutions and compromises."