So US Secretary of State John Kerry went back to Washington empty-handed again.

Very few people were surprised by the failure of this trip. Before his flight took off so that he could deal with all the other problems weighing down on him, the US secretary of state managed to hold a brief news conference in Ramallah. Using the most noncommittal language he could muster, Kerry said that there had been some progress in the talks, and that he’d be back to try again.

Palestinian spokesmen close to the negotiations told Al-Monitor that the only progress Kerry made during this last trip was that he learned how the differences between the parties have only become more evident, and how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Chairman Abu Mazen both know now exactly what they have to do to give peace a chance.

As for Kerry, what he took away from this naïve journey was something that he should have known before setting off on his grueling trips across the region: Netanyahu and Abu Mazen can’t enter into negotiations, no matter how much they want to. Both men have surrounded themselves with people firmly opposed to compromise. They’ve dug themselves into their positions and fired off a volley of bombastic slogans that are etched deeply in the minds of the Israeli and Palestinian public. They’ve both climbed up trees that are simply too high, and as things now stand, there is no one out there to hand them a ladder so that they can climb back down and make “the peace of the bold.”