In the six volumes he wrote about World War II, Winston Churchill brings up the hypothetical question of what would have happened had Adolf Hitler been accepted to art school in Vienna. Another hypothetical question that could be asked is what would have happened had Neville Chamberlain and not Churchill been at the helm when war erupted in the West.

If we move over to our own region, we might wonder what would have happened had the Arabs accepted the UN Partition Plan. Would Israel have remained a small state, not embroiled in wars? And what would have happened had the Oslo Accords not been forged in secret, leading, on September 13, 1993, to their festive signing on the White House lawn in the presence of Bill Clinton, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat?

And what would have happened at the celebratory signing of the Gaza-Jericho Agreement in Egypt in May 1994 had the hesitant Arafat not taken fright at Hosni Mubarak, who commanded "Sign it, you dog"? Arafat duly signed and everything ended with the festive ceremony during which Rabin, Peres and Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize.

In retrospect, it appears that in their moves for peace, Rabin, Peres and Menachem Begin made sure that presidents and kings were directly involved. The first peace agreement between Israel and Egypt would not have come about if Jimmy Carter hadn't assembled the White House's experts at Camp David and twisted Begin's arm for a full withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula. Rabin accorded great importance to a peace agreement with King Hussein of Jordan and cultivated friendships with U.S. presidents. He viewed them not only as security allies, but also as the sole figures who could bring peace to the region.

In contrast to Rabin, Ehud Barak erred as prime minister when he initiated a meeting with Arafat and Clinton at Camp David. Many recall the embarrassing picture on television in which Barak pushed Arafat into Clinton's office as though he were allowing him the honor of entering first. But actually it looked like he was fooling around with his comrades from his commando unit.

Several times Barak has shown pride for having proposed to Arafat the most generous offer ever made to him, including the division of Jerusalem. Arafat rejected the proposal, sensing that Barak and Clinton were tricking him. And justly so. Above all, the failure was Clinton's because he was not prepared the way Carter was at the Israeli-Egyptian peace conference. A short time after this failure the second intifada erupted.

Obama, who started his term with lofty pretensions about obtaining peace in the region, has not exactly succeeded. He is committed to what happens or does not happen between us and the Palestinians. Ahead of the September summit, the first lesson he learned from his predecessors was to invite Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah. The king, ruler of a country whose population is 60 percent Palestinian, has an interest in Israel not withdrawing from certain areas near his border. And Mubarak, who is not in the best of health, is worried that an awakening of the Muslim Brotherhood will prevent him from passing on the reins of government to his son.

How the days of Oslo are gone. I don't see Mubarak shouting at Mahmoud Abbas "Sign, you dog!" But the presence of the Egyptian and Jordanian leaders at the summit is also important for Obama. A question with an uncertain answer is whether the U.S. president has a detailed plan to bring the sides to a peace deal. For even when all the sides say the talks should go on without preconditions, that itself is a precondition. Benjamin Netanyahu upheld his commitment to a freeze on settlement construction, but in what way did this move a peace agreement forward? At most, the freeze helped Obama get through the midterm election campaign in relative quiet. What did Bibi receive in return? The fact that Abbas is conditioning the talks on the freeze continuing?

Likud is the same Likud. Benny Begin is categorically against any peace accord. Dan Meridor's proposal to apply the freeze only to areas that will not be included in a final agreement is unacceptable to Likud. Bibi promises to surprise, but Abbas is also liable to pull a surprise - he simply won't agree, it doesn't matter to what. The main test is Obama's. Will he come with a punctiliously detailed plan a la Carter to save the two sides from themselves? Since he already has the Noble Peace Prize, he should at least bring us peace.