For the key players in the Mideast power game, "regional stability" really means their own political endurance. Diplomacy serves as a domestic political tool for Israelis, Americans and Arabs alike. Progress is not essential, and the promised conference this summer -- assuming it happens at all -- will be a make-believe peace conference, largely for show.

Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, is a master political tactician who has made his political survival into an art. To keep his job, Sharon needs to bridge the contradiction between his reluctance to make territorial concessions to the Palestinians and his need for support from the Labor Party and the U.S. administration. So far, Sharon has managed to maintain both and enjoy vast popular support in Israel, an amazing feat with the country mired in war and economic decline. Knowing that his ideas on a future peace settlement are unacceptable to his own Likud Party as well as to Palestinians, Sharon puts off any discussion of substantive issues such as drawing borders or dismantling Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, he wears out his interlocutors with endless talk about procedures and modalities.

Despite his hard-liner image, Sharon seldom says "no." He prefers "yes, but . . . ." He is always eager for peace and ready to make "painful concessions," only not "right now." Last year, he demanded a complete cease-fire as a prerequisite for peace talks, then added "seven quiet days" as a first step, only to drop that demand recently. During his visit to the White House 12 days ago, he added a new wrinkle by calling for "fundamental reform" in the Palestinian Authority that would turn Arafat into a symbolic head of state like the Queen of England. Waiting for such reform to be accomplished could amount to waiting seven million days before any peace talks, but the prime minister made a good show bylaying out a complicated formula for which parts of the process would be sequential and which ones simultaneous.

In reality, all this gibberish of "what comes first" is a theological debate without much practical value -- just like the Mitchell and Tenet plans that went, unimplemented, down the drain after a year of anticipation and hundreds of hours of talks and planning around them. At home, Sharon could get away with it, because Israelis are united in believing that there is no Palestinian partner for peace and no point in talking with a demonized, dehumanized Arafat. The right calls for reoccupation of Palestinian territories and the left hopes for international intervention. Sharon avoids both and thus stays at the center.

Sharon's new toughness is a product of cold calculation. He fears an American-Saudi deal might force him into negotiations, and he feels the heat from his political rival at home, former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Last Sunday, "Bibi" beat up Sharon at their Likud Party's central committee. The incumbent prime minister failed to convince the group to avoid voting on a Netanyahu-sponsored "no to a Palestinian state" resolution. While having no practical meaning, the resolution's adoption exposed Sharon's weakness in his own camp and ignited the new election campaign.

His spin doctors portrayed Sharon's opposition to the Likud vote as a brave act of "national responsibility," warmly welcomed by the general public. However, while the prime minister has pledged to stay in office until the last possible day, Oct. 28, 2003, his aides are talking quietly about Sharon going to the polls in April or May next year. If the prime minister wants to stand for reelection, he needs right-wing support to get nominated. It is unlikely that he would risk political suicide to "be written in history" as a peacemaker a la Charles de Gaulle, the conservative former military leader who pulled France out of Algeria. At the same time, Sharon needs to block the efforts of the Labor Party chairman, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, to pull his party out of the coalition government. So Sharon plays with procedure to appeal to the left, suggesting a regional peace conference in the summer ("a trap," according to Netanyahu), while deferring any talk about substance, to keep the right behind him.

Sharon's most powerful ally is President Bush, who has played a key role in weakening the Palestinian leader. Bush, too, has no real interest in pushing for conflict resolution in the Holy Land, and he doesn't want to confront "my friend Ariel." Oil prices are stable. As mid-term elections in November draw near, Bush's backing of Israel is being rewarded by growing Jewish electoral support for Republicans, especially in the key state of Florida. The Iraqi venture has been delayed until next year, due to Arab and allied reluctance, lack of public interest in America, and renewed focus on domestic issues for November.

In March, however, Bush had to alter his course. First, his Saudi friends told visiting Vice President Cheney that "Sharon comes before Saddam." Then, the terrifying number of Israeli and Palestinian casualties drew political crossfire on the White House. Bush was blamed for "disengagement" and turning a blind eye to Israel's military escalation, and at the same time for being too soft and using a "double standard" vis-a-vis al Qaeda and Palestinian terrorists. His response was to launch a high-profile campaign of diplomatic activism. His personal intervention disarmed the most dangerous flashpoint and led to the Israeli pullout from Arafat's compound in Ramallah and subsequently from the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem. In the space of a few days recently, Washington was flooded with guests from the Middle East, namely Sharon, King Abdullah of Jordan and Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Faisal. Before their visits, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell summoned the "quartet" of U.S., European Union, U.N. and Russian top diplomats to discuss the regional conference.

And then the dust settled, and Washington returned to its business-as-usual mode. Bush was enthusiastic about Palestinian Authority reform, which could give administration bureaucrats an opportunity to fill tons of papers with proposals and flow charts without doing much. A follow-up Powell trip is planned for next month, and a visit by CIA Director George J. Tenet, announced by the president, was put on hold almost immediately after the TV cameras went off. Retired Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the administration's special Mideast envoy, has all but disappeared from the scene. Haven't we seen this movie before?

The only real activists in the field are the triad of Arab states, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, which are working to defuse the Israeli-Palestinian time bomb, following a year of sitting on the fence and making do with occasional verbal attacks on Sharon. Now, for the first time in years, they urge Arafat and Hamas to halt the suicide bombing, fearing a spillover of the conflict if another wave of attacks were to prompt an even stronger Israeli retaliation. The Arab leaders have no illusions about ending the conflict, but they know that Arafat's secret weapon is his ability to stir their streets and mobilize the Arab masses. So to keep their thrones, they seek stability and quiet in Palestine. On the other hand, they want to fend off any serious call for democratizing their own regimes. Therefore, they are reluctant to lead a movement for real Palestinian reform. Bush could use his big talk about "good governance, transparency and rule of law" in the PA as a veiled threat, meant to hold the Arab leaders in check and avoid a rift between them and Washington.

Arafat himself could teach every other leader a course in survival, after more than three decades of leading his people through extreme challenges. Coming out of his Israeli-imposed siege in Ramallah, he was quick to grab the reform idea. Faced with growing criticism at home, and under Arab, Israeli and American pressure, the PA chairman is trying to use "reform" to buy more time in power, until the clouds part again. In his address to the Palestinian legislative council on last Wednesday, following a disappointing trip in the West Bank, Arafat pledged a government overhaul, but said he needed "time for preparations." When you're in power, you always need time. He promised a new general election, seemingly in tune with the general call for democracy and renewal, but in fact, meant to delay any decision for about a year. In the meantime, the candidates would compete in Israel-bashing, just like Sharon and Netanyahu fought over Arafat-whomping at their Likud gathering.

The electoral calendar dictates stalling, as elections years are bad times for diplomacy. Bush wants his party to win in November's mid-term elections. Then campaign seasons will officially begin for Sharon, and perhaps Arafat. The problem is that the situation on the ground is far from stable, and the relative quiet of recent days does not reflect a new equilibrium. It is merely a fragile military stalemate, following Israel's "Defensive Shield" operation in the West Bank, which succeeded in curbing Palestinian terror attacks. Having failed to achieve a real cease-fire, political leaders in the region and the United States are now satisfied withthe illusion of diplomacy. That might ensure their survival for a time, but, with violence set to explode any time, it will guarantee little else.