For those Americans for whom peace in the Middle East has been their life's work, the letdown is understandable. Midwives often endure depression as the fruit of their labors is enjoyed by others. Yet the wisest have always known that a settlement imposed by outsiders rarely holds, that the end of enmity requires that the combatants themselves desire it. They know too that the glow of face-to-face agreements invariably fades as the vital enabling details are fashioned. Thus while Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin reached beyond Washington's mediation in the 1970s, cementing the eventual Egyptian-Israeli treaty required Jimmy Carter's skill at...
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