It's been nearly a month since Barack Obama took office and appointed, almost immediately, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East. In a region as wide, diverse, and troubled as the Middle East, it is difficult to asses anyone's performance—especially on an issue as seemingly intractable as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But in part because Obama provoked skepticism for his sky-high promises during the campaign, and mainly because Americans are a results-oriented people, we attempt here a preliminary assessment of Senator Mitchell's performance.

Before we delve into this, though, it is important to note that this has been an eventful month apart from American involvement. Inflation in the Gulf Cooperation Council has gone down, thought it's still high. The British military prepares to withdraw from Basra and turn its southern Iraqi bases over to the U.S. And just this past weekend, the King of Saudi Arabia fired the archconservative head of the religious police and appointed the nation's first woman deputy minister. (Of course, she can't exactly drive herself to work.)

Even if Mitchell brought peace to Jerusalem tomorrow, then, his long-term effect on the wider region is inevitably limited.

Nevertheless, Mitchell and Obama have shown some tentative steps in the direction of peace. Perhaps the largest victory is the fact that in Israel's February 10 elections, the centrist Kadima party edged the narrowest of victories over Likud, whose leader, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, opposes most talks with the Palestinians.

Right-wing parties—notably the openly racist Yisrael Beitinu—still did better than the centrists, and it remains an open question whether Kadima or Likud will actually form a government. There has been some talk of a coalition between the two—either under Netanyahu's leadership or with Netanyahu and Kadima leader Tzipi Livni alternating the premiership. Including Likud in the government is terribly helpful for the peace process, but it had been leading in nearly every poll in the run-up to the election. It is possible that George Mitchell's tacit support for Kadima put them over the top. By helping prevent a total Likud domination of government, Mitchell receives high marks for his back-door efforts in the election.

When it comes to actually negotiating, however, Mitchell has had less success. The week before the election, he gave assurances to outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that the Obama administration will not press Israel to lift the blockade on that Gaza Strip until Gilad Shalit—a soldier Hamas has held for two years—is released. Hamas leader Khaled Meshall rejected the offer out of hand. In this, Mitchell and Obama run the same risk President Bush ran with Iran: the U.S. cannot afford to set the expected end result of a negotiation as a preliminary term of that negotiation. Such a tactic is ineffective and often dangerous.

On the other hand, the Palestinians aren't ready to negotiate either. Reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas and regularizing the position of President Mahmoud Abbas—whose term expired on 9 January without anyone really noticing—are necessary before any agreement can have broad legitimacy among Palestinians. The administration may (or may not) be setting up groundwork for negotiations after the Israeli government is formed and after the Palestinian Authority resolves its disputes. One can see evidence of this in preliminary moves to warm relations with Syria, where many top Hamas officials—including Meshall—live.

If this is the case, then Mitchell has done a reasonably good job. He has gone to Cairo to discuss the matter with Egyptian officials, and only a couple weeks later Fatah agreed to participate in Egyptian led negotiations with Hamas. Israel has at least the possibility of a centrist government, which seemed unlikely before Obama took office. Under the breathtakingly slow speed of most Middle Eastern politics, this is progress.

Will these colors ever blend well?

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