Here’s the thing. Some problems, like squaring the circle and perpetual motion, are simply not solvable. Other problems, like Fermat’s last theorem, remain unsolved for 350 years until a hitherto unknown mathematician, laboring for 7 years in the Math Department’s basement, solves it.

Then there is the Middle East problem.

Everybody is working to solve it. The UN, the EU, the US, the Quartet, the New York Times, Bush, Bush’s Poodle, Condi, everybody! With all that diplomatic brainpower, have you ever wondered why the war continues unabated?

Bush is not a member of the loony Left, but his “big picture” was painted by a Liberal artist, Condoleezza Rice, with lefty State Department paintbrushes and pinkish colors from Academia. He appears to believe that the Middle East conflict can be settled through Israeli territorial concessions and large infusions of American cash. Concluding the Annapolis Conference, Bush affirmed his faith in a peaceful Palestinian state.

We meet to lay the foundation for the establishment of a new nation — a democratic Palestinian state that will live side by side with Israel in peace and security. We meet to help bring an end to the violence that has been the true enemy of the aspirations of both the Israelis and Palestinians.

Will the creation of a Palestinian state bring peace to the Middle East? Not very likely!

After a few years of benign neglect, Israel is back on the itineraries of well-meaning foreign emissaries. Former British prime minister Tony Blair visited the country in July in his new role as special envoy of the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers. Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived.

Each visit was concluded with a news conference at which promises of progress were made. But before any lasting on-the-ground movement toward peace can be achieved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, foreign emissaries, as well as some Israelis, will have to shake off some long-disproved tenets of the conventional wisdom about the dispute.

There are four main misconceptions that diplomats bring with them to Israel. Primary among them is the idea that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a prerequisite for stability in the Mideast. The truth is that the region is riven by clashes that have nothing to do with Israel. For instance, the Jewish state plays no role in the conflict between Shi’ites and Sunnis, between Persians and Arabs or between Arab nationalists and Arab Islamists.

The second misconception is that Israeli territorial concessions are the key to progress. The reality is that an ascendant jihadist Islam believes that it is leading the battle against Israel and the rest of the West. Given this dynamic, Israeli territorial or other concessions simply fill the jihadists’ sails, reinforcing their belief that Israel and the West are weak and can be militarily defeated.

True, a majority of Israelis supported Israel’s unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza in 2005 in the belief that meeting Hizbullah and Palestinian territorial demands would nullify the cause of conflict between them. We now know the results: The Hizbullah and Palestinian reactions – concerted terror wars, kidnapped Israeli soldiers, rockets fired at Israeli cities – made clear that the Mideast’s central conflict is not territorial but ideological. And ideology cannot be defeated by concessions.

Emissaries also still believe that “the occupation” blocks agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. In the West, the term usually means the territories Israel conquered in the Six-Day War in 1967. If the problem between Israelis and Palestinians were just the 1967 territories, and the solution were dividing those lands between the two sides (as proposed, most recently, in 2000 by former prime minister Ehud Barak), the conflict would have ended long ago.

Instead, the heart of the problem is that many Palestinians – Fatah and Hamas in particular – and even some Israeli Arabs use “occupation” to refer to all of Israel. They do not recognize the Jewish people’s right to an independent state, a right affirmed again and again in the international arena.