Warming up for this week’s Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, White House spokesman Dana Perino explained that President Bush did not plan to be deeply involved in the negotiations process that the conference was supposed to start.

“The president,” she explained, “is not a gambler.”

Apparently he only bets on sure things, like Iraq.

In the most direct sense, of course, the White House is right. For U.S. presidents, the Arab-Israeli issue is the all-time sucker bet, the diplomatic three-card monte game you can’t win – and can’t collect if you do.

Bill Clinton spent most of his last year in office trying to broker a total peace deal, immersing himself in the issues down to block-by-block maps of Jerusalem, and ended up with no thank-yous for playing and no lovely parting gifts. President Bush himself, over the objections of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, insisted on new Palestinian elections, and saw the Islamic militants of Hamas win.

Some reports about the roots of Annapolis say it’s driven by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice looking for a legacy besides Iraq. But if you’re looking for a last-minute resume-brightener, Jerusalem is the last place to look. You’d be better off declaring yourself a born-again global warming advocate and putting your arm around a polar bear.

Even presidents who can claim some impact get nothing out of it. Jimmy Carter drove the Camp David peace deal between Israel and Egypt, and lost re-election anyway. The first George Bush’s pressure on Israel led to the Madrid peace conference, but he was gone from the White House by the time it turned into a peace process.

So you could see why President Bush’s plan is to propel the Israelis and Palestinians to the table, but stay out of the casino himself. The announcement the president read Tuesday talked about a schedule for talks between Israelis and Palestinians, but mentioned no U.S. participation.

But as the president could learn from any of the ads for any state lottery, if you don’t play, you can’t win.

Especially if you’re the United States dealing with the Arabs and Israelis. Only the United States – and probably only the president of the United States – can give the assurances and guarantees that produce a deal. By giving its largest foreign aid packages to Israel and Egypt, the United States is still underwriting Camp David. But after 30 years without a major Arab-Israeli war, most people don’t think it’s a bad deal.

The United States has to gamble here because the other players are betting heavily with weak hands.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is going into this process with minimal popularity, a wobbly coalition, and rockets and shells falling daily onto Israel from Gaza, where the Israelis departed and left the territory to the Palestinians.

“I had many good reasons not to come here to this meeting. Memories of failures in the near and distant past weighed heavily upon us,” Olmert told the meeting.

But after talking about the Palestinians’ “poverty, neglect, alienation, bitterness and a deep, unrelenting sense of humiliation,” he concluded, “I believe that there is no just solution other than the solution of two national states for two peoples.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is in an even more fragile situation, with no authority in Hamas-controlled Gaza and seriously challenged even in the West Bank.

Tuesday, Abbas promised to “combat chaos, violence, terrorism, and to secure security, order and the rule of law … .

“I say to the citizens of Israel, in this extraordinary day, you, our neighbors on this small land, neither us nor you are begging for peace from each other. It is a common interest for us and for you. Peace and freedom is a right for us, in as much as peace and security is a right for you and for us.”

There is a saying about the Arab-Israeli conflict, which so far has proved true, that there can be no war without Egypt and no peace without Syria.

But there’s another part to it: There’s no progress without the United States.

Even with an uncomfortably deep U.S. involvement, success is a long shot.

Without it, failure is a sure thing.