Dr Rice leaves Washington on Friday for three days of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas. -- PHOTO: AFP

Dr Rice leaves Washington on Friday for three days of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, leaders who have not resumed talks since suspending them on March 2.

Mr Abbas froze negotiations in protest at massive Israeli army raids on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip aimed at stopping rocket fire from the territory.

The Israeli military incursions killed more than 130 Palestinians, including civilians and children.

The standoff deepened when on March 6 a lone Palestinian gunman opened fire on students at a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem, killing eight before being gunned down himself. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

The prospects for peace dimmed further on Wednesday, when Mr Olmert said he did not envision anything more than the outline of an accord being sketched by 2009, and vowed to continue building Israeli settlements.

Mr Abbas and Mr Olmert pledged to relaunch their talks, but they never did.

Abbas and his Fatah party has instead held talks with Hamas in an effort to reconcile with the Islamist party that won a landslide in 2006 elections and which has controlled the volatile and impoverished coastal strip for months.

However, Mr Olmert insists he will never talk with Hamas and the US administration of George W. Bush is hardly amenable to the notion of seeing the radical movement return to power.

Talks with Hamas necessary to unblock peace process
But Middle East experts in Washington say talks with Hamas are necessary to unblock the peace process and stabilise the border between Gaza and Egypt, which is one of Israel's key demands.

'If nothing is done about Gaza, sooner or later some fatal incident will occur that will guarantee no further progress on peace talks,' said Mr Dennis Ross, a former Middle East negotiator for ex-president Bill Clinton.

'That would only validate the Hamas narrative that diplomacy never produces anything, while violence always produces something,' said Mr Ross, now an expert at the Washington Institute for Near East policy, during a recent roundtable on the topic.

'And the last thing the Bush administration should want as its legacy it is to leave Hamas stronger than it was eight years ago.'

Mr Bush has pressed for a signed peace treaty that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state before he left the White House in January 2009, and launched his administration's final appeal for such a process with a peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland in November.

The already protracted process has seen Israel and the Palestinians bicker over the internationally drafted 2003 'roadmap' calling on Israel to stop building settlements in the occupied West Bank and on Palestinians to improve security.

Further complicating the matter, and with the potential to kill the effort altogether, there have been deepening divisions within the Palestinians' two main parties - the Islamist Hamas and Mr Abbas's more moderate Fatah.

'(The) Palestinian house (is) so divided that it complicates peace efforts, perhaps fatally, and weakens the political as opposed to militant tendency within Hamas,' said Mr Daniel Levy, who directs the Middle East policy initiative at the New America Foundation.

'The opportunity presented by a Palestinian government of national unity, with Hamas endorsing both a ceasefire and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, needs to be resurrected in some fashion,' wrote Mr Levy in The American Prospect.

Negotiations could only take place indirectly
Since Washington regards Hamas as a terrorist outfit, negotiations could only take place indirectly, according to Mr Gaith al-Omari, another expert at the Washington Institute.

Mr Omari pointed out that Egypt's ability to act as intermediary in talks between Israel and Hamas - a role that Dr Rice has backed - has allowed a certain calm to return to Gaza in recent weeks.

'Therefore, although engaging Hamas politically is out of the question, engaging it in conversations about de-escalation could prove useful,' Mr Omari said.

'Such discussion should be conducted through a third party that already has ties with Hamas; Turkey or Jordan would be good partners for this approach.' One of Dr Rice's stops during the tour is to be in Jordan for talks with King Abdullah II.

She met last week with Egyptian Defence Minister Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, for talks on the border with Gaza and Egypt, and the need to improve humanitarian conditions for the Palestinians in order to avoid further radicalization of public opinion, her spokesman said.

After her talks with King Abdullah, Dr Rice is to head to Kiev to meet Mr Bush. -- AFP