ISRAEL:George Bush's first presidential visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, which ends today, was never going to be about substance. It did not disappoint.
The American president told Israel that its security is paramount and reiterated his view that Iran is "a threat to world peace".
But he also told the Israelis that settlement outposts would have to be dismantled and that they should stop impeding efforts to build an efficient Palestinian security service.
He told the Palestinians he is confident an agreement can be reached before he leaves office in a year's time and that they should have an independent Palestinian state with territorial contiguity. But he said there could be no peace as long as rockets were still being fired from Gaza into Israel and indicated that Israel would not have to remove all settlements in the West Bank in a final peace agreement.
Neither Israeli nor Palestinian leaders believed the visit by the president would prompt a dramatic breakthrough in peace talks between the sides, which were renewed last month following a US-hosted peace summit in late November.
They were right: Mr Bush's visit, at most, has been largely about trying to make the right noises in order to improve the atmospherics around peace talks between the sides.
As the president made clear, it will be up to Israelis and Palestinians to sort out their own problems. The US is ready to help - or to "nudge" the sides towards an agreement, as Mr Bush said on Wednesday - but it is clear that in his final year in office, the president will not be altering the arms-length approach he has adopted to the conflict since taking office in 2000. An agreement dictated by America, he said during his visit, was unlikely to hold.
Most Israelis and Palestinians, if asked, will tell you that if an agreement is reached, it certainly won't be during Mr Bush's term.
Both Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas are politically weak. Mr Olmert has managed to survive intense public criticism of his handling of the Lebanon war in 2006, but two hardline parties in his ruling coalition have threatened to bolt at the first hint he is ready to make concessions to the Palestinians.
There have been some suggestions, though, that Mr Olmert's political weakness could be the key to progress in talks with the Palestinians. If he senses that elections are becoming inevitable, he may try to accelerate negotiations in the hope that a peace deal - or the basis of an agreement - with the Palestinians would serve as an effective campaign platform.
It is difficult, though, to find anything redeeming in Mr Abbas's plight. With Hamas controlling Gaza, after having vanquished his Fatah movement in the coastal strip last June, the Palestinian leader is effectively the president of the West Bank. It is unlikely that he will re-establish control over Gaza in the foreseeable future and were he to successfully forge a deal with Israel, it is not clear how the strip would be included.
Mr Bush, it seems, has now concluded the more ceremonial part of his visit to the region and will get down to the business end when he heads off today for a tour of the Gulf states, as well as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. If anything, he will be hoping his stopover in Jerusalem and Ramallah will serve as an indication to Arab leaders that he has not abandoned the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But his main focus will not be a Middle East peace accord. Rather, it will be efforts to bolster support for his Iraqi policy and to galvanise pro-western Arab countries in his bid to curb Iran's influence in the region.