The new secretary of state must preserve his authority, and that's undermined by repeated travel viewed as motion without movement. Working on a proposal to get the parties back to the table without a way to keep them there just won't cut it. Condi Rice got her own Hebrew verb -- le kandel -- for her eight trips to put together the Annapolis Conference. The word means "to do nothing."
In this regard, Kerry has a bureaucratic problem. He's right to shy away from appointing a high-level envoy, but he does need a person of some stature who reports to him and can work this issue 24/7, particularly in the region. There are problems with allowing his assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs to play that role: It's a big region and the Israeli-Palestinian issue is a full-time business. Nor can the U.S. ambassador to Israel or the consul general in Jerusalem do it, because it's hard for them to engage with both sides. But if this process gets going, he will need someone who can travel to the region with a frequency that he simply can't.
Do: Identify a strategy
I know this seems so obvious that it shouldn't need repeating. But just take a look at Obama's first term: A bunch of very smart people either thought they had a strategy, or figured they didn't need one. Either way, what emerged -- pushing Netanyahu on a comprehensive settlement freeze -- took bumbling to a new level.
Describing Kerry's challenge is simple. Given the current impasse between Israelis and Palestinians, what might work?
Here's what won't -- a focus on confidence-building measures. It's the 20th anniversary of Oslo -- a heroic process that failed in part because its interim character couldn't be tied to a political horizon that included a resolution to the core issues of the status of Jerusalem, borders, security, and refugees.
The other idea whose time hasn't come -- but is already linked to Kerry's talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- is using the Turks to lean on Hamas to recognize Israel. It's a curious strategy that threatens to undermine Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, alienate Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi, and provide a justification for some Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to put the negotiations on permanent hold. And it will also embroil Obama in a political mess with Congress and the pro-Israel community.
Every think tank in Washington is basically sending the same message to Kerry: A conflict-ending agreement isn't possible now, so focus on getting an agreement on principles or terms of reference on the big issues. And try to begin with a focus on borders and security -- the two issues where the gaps are narrowest.
This approach makes sense, but has its drawbacks. Jerusalem is a territorial issue too, and by breaking the issues apart you remove the capacity to do trade-offs. For Palestinians, deferring Jerusalem and refugees is a major problem, and the chances of getting this Israeli government and Abbas to agree on setting the border based on some variation of the June 1967 lines is remote.
Still, it's likely that Kerry will try to persuade Israelis and Palestinians to pursue some variant of the security for sovereignty tradeoff, together with confidence-building measures in the initial phase.
Will it work? Well, who knows. But along the way, a moment will invariably come when success or failure may depend on a sustained intervention and some risk taking by the president. We already know Kerry cares about the two-state solution -- he's spending his weekends in Jerusalem and Ramallah instead of his pad on Nantucket. But does the president? At some point, we're also going to find out whether -- or to be more precise, just how much -- Barack Obama cares.
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