It is a fundamental rule of international diplomacy that you don't initiate high-level talks between feuding national leaders unless you are certain of achieving a positive outcome. The consequences of failure are just too grave.
The Clinton Administration chose to ignore that rule when inviting Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, to the Wye River summit in Maryland. It was a measure of US desperation.
With May 4th, 1999, the date the Oslo accords expire, fast approaching, Mr Arafat bent on declaring statehood, and Mr Netanyahu determined to resist him, it was deemed absolutely critical to revive the negotiating process.
Given that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Arafat have been unable to agree on anything for almost two years, the summit was a colossal gamble. But the Americans played the best hand they could.
They set a firm deadline, last Monday. They insisted that a detailed deal on the next West Bank withdrawal be wrapped up, not a partial agreement. The President cleared his schedule and personally hosted many of the sessions.
And yet Monday came and went without a deal.
That day's hand-grenade attack by a long-time Hamas militant in Beersheba bus station, which left 64 Israelis injured, actually gave the Americans an opportunity to cut their losses.
They could have drafted a joint statement, declaring that considerable progress had been made, but in the light of the violence all sides had deemed it appropriate to suspend the talks and resume, say, next week.
That would have provided an opportunity for more preparatory work, perhaps a postponement or two. The international spotlight would have moved on to another dispute in another part of the world.
But the summiteers opted not to bail out.
Mr Netanyahu, the same Mr Netanyahu who consistently and contemptuously urged his assassinated predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin, to break off all contacts with Mr Arafat whenever Hamas staged an attack, chose to keep talking.
Indeed, he echoed Mr Rabin's 1994 and 1995 comments about such attacks underlining the need for the improved security co-operation with the Palestinians, co-operation that could only be achieved through negotiation.
By keeping on talking, through day five and day six of this extended summit, the parties have effectively raised the stakes still higher. Because if, after all this intensive talk, with the involvement of the US President and the ailing King of Jordan and all the top Israeli and Palestinian officials, they still don't reach a substantive deal, the only reasonable conclusion will be that no deal will ever be viable between these two sets of personalities.
If that is the impression ultimately left by this summit, it could prompt the very explosion of violence its initiators were so anxious to avoid.
So the summit talks on the Wye River simply cannot stop now, cannot end without a deal. Like the gamblers they are, doubling their bets to try and cover their losses, the Americans simply have to keep on playing, have to keep their guests at the table.
David Horovitz is managing editor of the Jerusalem Report