WASHINGTON – With a cast of characters that has presided over numerous failed Middle East peace efforts, the Obama administration launched a fresh bid Monday to pull Israel and the Palestinians into substantive negotiations.

Despite words of encouragement, deep skepticism about the prospects for success surrounded the initial discussions, which were opening with a dinner hosted by Secretary of State John Kerry. He named a former U.S. ambassador to Israel to shepherd what all sides believe will be a protracted and difficult process.

Former envoy Martin Indyk, who played key roles in the Clinton administration’s multiple, unsuccessful pushes to broker peace deals between Israel and Syria and Israel and the Palestinians, will assume the day-to-day responsibility for keeping the talks alive for the next nine months.

The Israeli side will be led by chief negotiator Tzipi Livni, a former foreign minister who was active in the Bush administration’s ill-fated Annapolis peace talks with the Palestinians, and Yitzhak Molcho, a veteran adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who was part of the Israeli team involved in Obama’s two previous attempts to broker negotiations.

The Palestinian team will be led by chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and President Mahmoud Abbas’ adviser, Mohammed Shtayyeh, both of whom have been major players in failed negotiations with the Israelis since 1991.

Kerry spoke for about 45 minutes with representatives from the Israeli negotiating team and then another roughly 45 minutes with the Palestinian side before sitting down for dinner on the top floor of the State Department.

Despite the presence of so many people whose past experience does not include success, Kerry and other officials voiced cautious optimism about the resumption of talks which he painstakingly negotiated during six months of shuttle diplomacy that began with Obama’s own trip to Israel in March.

“It sounds like we’re lucky to have decades of experience ready to come back to the table and make an effort to push forward,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

With a U.S.-imposed gag order on revealing any details about the substance or framework of the talks, gauging progress will be difficult. But the outlines of any eventual peace deal are fairly well known: a Palestinian state based on the lines that existed before the 1967 war in which Israel seized east Jerusalem and occupied the Palestinian territories, with agreed land swaps and recognition of a secure, Jewish state of Israel.

But neither side will publicly commit to those goals, and getting there will require major concessions that will be difficult to sell to the Israeli and Palestinian publics.

Ahead of the initial discussions on procedures and guidelines for the meetings, which the U.S. hopes will grow into deeper, more substantive talks on the key sticking points, Kerry urged both sides to strive for “reasonable compromises on tough, complicated, emotional and symbolic issues.”