Two qualities rarely associated with modern secretaries of state are patience and keeping your mouth shut in public. But in his first six months, John Kerry has demonstrated both — and his stubborn silence appears to have brought him to the door of renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. . .There has been a little of Captain Ahab in Kerry’s quest. He has made six trips to the Middle East, shuttling back and forth trying to coax concessions on what President Obama in 2010 called “as intractable a problem as you get.” Perhaps because of Obama’s frustrations, White House officials concede that Kerry has been operating mostly on his own.

Kerry has persisted, to growing yawns and catcalls from Washington observers. Jeffrey Goldberg, a well-informed columnist for Bloomberg News and the Atlantic, said Kerry was on a “fool’s errand.” The buzz before Friday’s announcement was that Kerry had botched his first six months by obsessively pursuing the great white whale of the peace process and ignoring more urgent problems such as Egypt and Syria.. .
Kerry did two smart things to grease the process. He persuaded the Arab League to amend its 2002 peace initiative to drop the old demand for a return to the 1967 lines and instead allow border swaps. And the Arab League renewed its promise of eventual recognition of Israel. Kerry also encouraged Israeli and Arab entrepreneurs to craft a showy $4 billion plan that hints at the prosperity that could come with peace and Palestinian statehood.

To manage the detailed negotiations, Kerry will turn to his longtime aide Frank Lowenstein, perhaps joined by Martin Indyk, a highly regarded former U.S. ambassador to Israel. In a 2012 book Indyk ­co-authored, he summed up the problem facing negotiators: “Nowhere in Obama’s foreign policy has the gap been wider between promise and delivery than in the Middle East.” Kerry has been plugging along these past six months, and he seems to have gotten somewhere. People rarely make money gambling on Middle East peace, but once again, it’s time to place your bets.