The US government announced a few days ago that anyone invited to a planned Middle East peace conference next month will have to abide by a set of conditions (without stating that those rules are largely written by the United States and Israel). A few days later, a Syrian government daily, Tishrin, charged that Washington seeks to destabilize the Middle East and said a US-sponsored conference was unlikely to make any progress toward peace. Israel, for its part, talked only vaguely about building confidence, developing a dialogue with the Palestinians, and paving the way for substantive peace talks in the near future, while continuing to kill, jail and colonize Palestinians. This looks like a case of "here we go again," with the same players taking the same failed positions in a rather grotesque replay of cumulative past peace-making failures.

All three of these principal actors - not to mention Lebanon - are in wobbly condition, shaken by domestic vulnerabilities, foreign policy quagmires and wars, and/or internal stresses caused by their own failed policies. Syria's condition is the most unfortunate, because it seems to have chosen immobility and quasi-isolation when it should have been a robust and prosperous leader in this region. Syria's economic problems are momentarily camouflaged by high oil prices; but with Syrian oil output expected to fizzle out in a decade or so the moment of truth will be devastating for a population that cannot be expected to make belt-tightening a lifestyle. Iranian investments and a few others from friendly countries have carried the Syrian economy, though this is also a dead-end road. Archaic centralized control policies, combined with widespread inefficiency and corruption, prevent Syria from achieving its economic potential. The persistent damaging impact of the conflict with Israel, and tensions with the United States and others in the West and the Arab world, further freeze Syria in a state of economic mediocrity.

The echoes from Israel, the United States and the half-Palestinians headed by President Mahmoud Abbas complete this symphony of off-key bugles, making much noise but little sense and no progress. Israel, Palestine and the United States must make more serious moves toward a fair peace - rather than an Israeli-American gangland ultimatum - if they want the rest of the region and the world to take them seriously. Syria, for its part, must get off the roller-coaster of its own pseudo-radicalism, and instead understand that it cannot continue to deal with the realities of 2007 with the rhetoric and policies of generation ago.

Even in the Middle East, rarely have so many politicians and leaders acted with such collective incompetence.