News that Prime Minister Blair, who steps down next Wednesday, has the Bush administration’s backing to succeed James Wolfensohn as Middle East envoy of the Quartet is being greeted with a certain amount of excitement. Mr. Blair has been talking to David Welch, the assistant state secretary responsible for the Middle East, in London this week. Those close to Mr. Blair say that he has yet to decide what to do after leaving office.

No doubt his caution is prudent. He may be an optimist on the Middle East, but he is also a realist. He shares the insight of President Bush that the Palestinians, like the rest of the Arab world, will be able live in peace with one another and Israel only under a liberal democracy and the rule of law. He harbors no illusions about the gangster oligarchy of Fatah.

If Mr. Blair decides to focus on the Middle East, and if the Quartet will accept him as its representative there, then he would at least speak with the authority of a statesman who has consistently championed Israel’s right to defend itself. He has kept his distance from the traditionally pro-Arab sympathies of the British foreign office. But what of the notion that if only the right emissary could be found, peace is just waiting to break out.

The only missing element, under that formula, seems to be that Israel makes yet more concessions to induce the Palestinians to accept a two-state solution as a final settlement. Certainly it is the consensus shared by three of the four members of the Quartet: the United Nations, Russia, and the European Union. Only the fourth member — the United States — reckons that the onus is on the Palestinian Arabs to prove they want peace.

The whole idea of handing over negotiations to the Quartet was flawed from the start. The United Nations has long since become part of the Middle East problem, not the solution. President Putin’s interest in the region is in keeping the price of oil high enough to bolster his dictatorial regime. The Europeans less interested in peace than in a “peace process” which preserves the myth of Palestinian victimhood.

The sad fact is that no emissary to the Middle East, however high-profile, can persuade the Islamists there to renounce their totalitarian jihad against the West. Israel is the first line of defense against them. Only when the other peoples who inhabit the region learn that they have far more to fear from Hamas and Hezbollah than from the only democracy in the region will there be anything worthwhile for an envoy to do.