ERUSALEM — Seeking support for war, President Bush appeared before the world to describe a new commitment to achieving peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, saying he envisioned a state of Palestine side by side with Israel.

That war was in Afghanistan.

Now a new war is under way, just a Scud-shot away from the conflict here. And right before the fighting began, Mr. Bush appeared in the White House Rose Garden to announce that he was "personally committed" to a diplomatic "road map" toward peace and a Palestinian state in just three years.

This time, the analysts and political leaders say, he really means it.

The reasoning is that President Bush cannot hope to stabilize the region, much less democratize Arab states, so long as the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians endures as a propaganda tool for the likes of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. After the war with Iraq, Arab leaders will demand that President Bush "prove what he can do for peace," Dennis Ross, the former Clinton administration negotiator, wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal.

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, trying to shore up his political base, desperately sought President Bush's new commitment, and trumpeted it when it came, even as he acknowledged that some might doubt American resolve. "The U.S. is now committed — and, I believe, genuinely — to the road map for peace," he told the House of Commons last week.

The road map is a seven-page document drafted by the so-called Quartet — the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan — on Dec. 20 of last year. It calls for dramatic action by both sides to produce a Palestinian state with provisional borders as early as this year. That would be followed in 2005 by a resolution of the underlying disputes, an acceptance of Israel by Arab nations and a sovereign Palestinian state.

Particularly given the international auspices of the peace plan, Mr. Blair finds the logic for determined engagement compelling. "I do not believe there is any other issue with the same power to reunite the world community than progress on the issues of Israel and Palestine," he said.

But there is a flaw in all this analysis: The Bush administration has never accepted it. It has never regarded peace between Israelis and Palestinians as a goal as central to American interests as, say, getting rid of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has repeatedly rejected any notion that the administration is not fully committed to pushing ahead. But since Sept. 11, 2001, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has rarely been more than a nagging subtext of the Bush administration's declared war on terrorism. The administration has resolutely resisted making it the text, and linking the resolution of this conflict to its wider war. That is partly because connecting the two could be seen as an admission that American policy on the issue is a legitimate source of Arab anger at the United States.

This helps explain why, when he appeared in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush did not even mention Iraq, and why, when he appeared two days later in the Azores to talk about Iraq, he did not mention Israel or the Palestinians.

The administration clearly recognizes there is a problem here, and it may truly want to help. But with rebuilding Iraq, confronting North Korea and addressing the American economy already on its agenda, this conflict may never rise to the level of a top priority, certainly not enough of one to justify the political risks involved in dragging the antagonists along the route outlined by the road map — particularly during the coming presidential election year.

It would be much easier, some experts say, for the White House simply to create the impression that it is trying.

"You have a whole menu of diplomatic activity that doesn't force you to take political risks," said Robert Malley, a former Clinton negotiator who is the Middle East program director of the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental conflict prevention organization. "You don't have to look too far to find the pieces that will fill the diplomatic vacuum that Blair and others have been complaining about."

For example, he said, "an international conference would be seen by Arab countries as a major step, even if didn't change that much" on the ground. Such a move, he said, would eat up time and score the administration political points, without risking a confrontation with Israel.

It is striking how little stock the adversaries here, along with the administration's Quartet partners, are putting in Mr. Bush's new commitment. "Who is he kidding?" asked Dr. Ali B. Jarbawi, a political scientist at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah. "We know he is not going to enforce it."

They recall the mission of Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the administration's special envoy, around the time of the Afghan war. Mr. Powell said that General Zinni would stay in the region "for as long as it takes." But the violence continued, and about a year ago, the general vanished.

For Palestinians and Israelis the acid test is what Mr. Bush meant when he said, in referring to the road map, that "we will expect and welcome contributions from Israel and the Palestinians to this document that will advance true peace."

The State Department has told its Quartet allies that Mr. Bush was not referring to changes to the substance of the plan, but only to debate over how it should be carried out. But when it comes to Middle East peace, implementation is substance.

Israeli officials want basic changes in the document. They say it diverges from understandings reached with the Bush administration. Palestinian officials say they accepted the plan on the understanding that it would be imposed on both sides.

The fundamental question is whether the two sides are expected to make their concessions at the same time or in sequence.

The plan now calls for action "in parallel," including, for example, an immediate halt to incitement by both sides. As the Palestinians crack down on violence, the Israelis are supposed to stop all punitive demolition of Palestinian homes and dismantle all settlement outposts built in the last two years.

In addressing the United Nations Security Council recently, Terje Roed-Larsen, the special envoy here, called parallelism "a key guiding principle" of the new plan.

"Critically, and as we have seen so many times, no cease-fire can take hold without also simultaneously addressing political progress and the economic suffering," he said.

But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says the Palestinians must act first.

Even if the Bush administration doesn't use all its authority for achieving peace, events may still conspire toward that end.

While Palestinian anger with the United States is growing, so are the signs of increased effort to satisfy American demands.

For example, the Bush administration has repeatedly called for Yasir Arafat to be sidelined. It largely left it to its Quartet allies and the Palestinians to make that happen — and last week, they achieved the appointment of the Americans' candidate, Mahmoud Abbas, to the new position of prime minister. It is still not clear how much authority Mr. Abbas will have.

Then, on Thursday, Palestinian security forces killed a Hamas militant in a renewed campaign to stop Hamas rocket fire at Israel.

"You see the little magnets getting in line with the new American power grid," said Dr. Eran Lerman, director of the Israel-Middle East office of the American Jewish Committee.

On the Israeli side, Mr. Sharon has said that only a diplomatic solution could rescue Israel from its worst economic crisis in 50 years.

Add to those two factors other changes brought to the region with the war, and the pressure from Britain and Arab states, and it just may be that the stars are aligning to turn Mr. Bush's Rose Garden announcement into a serious initiative, said Martin S. Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel and assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs.

"It's those four factors that have the potential to come together in a post-Saddam environment, to convert what started as political payback into a more meaningful peace process," he said.