Ever since Jimmy Carter got the Israelis and the Egyptians to sign the Camp David Accords U.S. Presidents have been trying to broker a peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And every one has failed.

No one tried harder than President Clinton to make the peace. He got them to sign the Oslo accords, then in 2000, he took Arafat and Ehud Barak to Camp David. He felt it would be his legacy if he could get the two warring parties to make peace.

Now, seven years after Clintons last attempt, and fourteen years after the signing of Oslo, we have Annapolis. Another attempt to get Israelis and Palestinians to agree to make peace. Here's the problem. We can't make them make peace. It has to be something that both parties want to do, and the Palestinians have made it very clear that under no circumstances will they live in peace with the Israelis.

After the Oslo agreement, Arafat showed how much he was committed to peace by launching an intifada against the Isrealis. After the second attempt, in which Prime Minister Barak offered the Palestinians everything they could want, Arafat launched a second intifada, killing over a thousand Israelis, and four thousand palestinians.

Now, Arafat is dead, but Abbas is a leader cut from the same cloth. He can't make peace. The terrorists in Hamas, and in his own camp won't allow it. Just as the Muslim brotherhood killed President Sadat for signing a peace treaty with Israel, Abbas knows he could end up dead if he actually made peace with the Israelis.

The leaders of the Arab world have no one to blame for this but themselves. They poisoned their culture with hatred to the point that they are held hostage by it. Abbas is playing a game. He can come to the conference to please western leaders and diplomats, say the right slogans about peace, all with a wink and a nod towards his people.

His people know he won't make peace, because they won't let him. In order to make peace he would have to make concessions. He would have to forget about Palestinian "refugees", just accept the fact that Jerusalem is not going to be a Palestinian city, and that the security barrier isn't going anywhere until the Palestinians stop carrying out terrorist attacks. In exchange for those concessions the Palestinians would get an end to Israeli occupation and an independent state.

The Palestinian leadership needs all of those things to continue as grievances, after all if the Palestinian people can't blame the Jews, they might just start blaming their own leaders.

President Bush and Secretary Rice should avoid the headache, and the inevitable failure and stop playing peacemaker. We can't make peace. Just as Iraq didn't start to become peaceful until the Iraqis decided they wanted peace, Israel and the Palestinians won't have peace until they decide they really want it. Are the Palestinians willing to let go of their Jew hatred and make concessions of their own? Not at this time, and until that changes peace in the Middle East will be an elusive dream.