JERUSALEM — Israel's 60th anniversary has come and gone. So, too, has President George W. Bush's final visit to the Middle East. Amid the celebrations and the soul-searching, no meaningful breakthrough in the deadlocked Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is visible.
There are immediate reasons why this is so: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government is weak and unpopular, mainly due to the botched 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas is even weaker, having lost control of Gaza to Hamas after a violent putsch last year.
On the Palestinian side, this is part of a deeper phenomenon: a long-standing failure to create the institutional structures necessary for nation building.