The outlook for peace in the Middle East remains gloomy. But that hasn’t stopped some people from continuing to try.

In Geneva last week, former President Jimmy Carter joined a group of prominent Israelis and Palestinians to promote an unofficial peace plan drafted in secret talks between moderates on both sides of the long-festering conflict.

It would create a Palestinian state including most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, remove most Israeli settlements and divide Jerusalem. It bears a close resemblance to the plan that Bill Clinton proposed at the end of his presidency.

On the day of last week’s ceremony, however, an Israeli raid on suspected militants in the Palestinian headquarters of Ramallah and the start by Israel of a new neighborhood in East Jerusalem epitomized the pessimistic reality of current conditions.

That is likely to remain true as long as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat maintain their hard-line policies. And the Bush administration’s preoccupation with Iraq, plus pressures from the upcoming presidential election, probably will prevent the kind of U.S. role needed to ensure progress.

Former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Information Minister Yasir Abed Rabbo headed the teams that developed the initiative known as the Geneva Accord.

Their plan has attracted praise from many top world leaders, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Russian foreign minister and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

But the principal parties remain cool, despite renewed evidence that the region’s people are far more willing than their leaders to accept compromises.

A public opinion poll, commissioned by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy in Houston and the International Crisis Group, showed a majority of both Israelis and Palestinians support a settlement along the lines of the Beilin-Rabbo proposal.

But key Israelis and Palestinians show little movement.

The Palestinians, as often has seemed the case, are split. Hard-line elements denounced the plan. Arafat sent a message calling it “a brave and courageous initiative … that opens the door to peace.” But the veteran Palestinian leader, who torpedoed the 2001 plan, often has been more positive in words than in deeds.

Sharon has denounced the whole exercise as subversive, noting that only duly elected governments can conduct such negotiations. His government repeatedly has opposed surrendering as much occupied territory as the plan envisions.

And as Carter continues to point out, Israel’s persistence in expanding West Bank settlements has become a principal obstacle to peace, along with the inability or refusal by Palestinian leaders to curb terrorism.

When the settlements issue arose after Carter brokered the 1978 Camp David Accords, there were 4,000 Israelis in them; now, there are more than 200,000.

It even has reached the point where President Bush, whose steadfastly pro-Sharon stance has complicated peace prospects, cut U.S. loan guarantees to Israel recently to protest the Israelis’ plan for a security wall far inside the West Bank.

But the administration remains committed to its less explicit “road map.” And it is unrealistic to expect it to crack down on Israel in an election year, especially as long as Palestinian leaders acquiesce in terrorism.

It also is unrealistic to expect Bush to gamble now on any major new peace bid, given the high odds against success.

The irony is that almost everyone involved with the Middle East over three decades concedes any ultimate settlement will be close to what Clinton proposed and the Geneva Accord envisions.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.