By Bruce Stokes, Director of Global Economic Program, Pew Research Center

Special to Foreign Policy

No one said a Middle East peace deal was going to be easy. Brokering such an agreement has been a lost cause for what’s now a long line of U.S. presidents. So when Secretary of State John Kerry embarked on yet another attempt to get Israelis and Palestinians to finally resolve their differences over land, Jerusalem, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees, many skeptics wrote off the effort as a quixotic quest. Now that the talks appear to have irretrievably broken down, such skepticism about the seriousness of purpose of both the Israelis and Palestinians seems vindicated.

As always, Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans have begun to point fingers over who is to blame for the recent breakdown.

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