Each side has been careful not to commit to a course of action that it cannot quickly back out of. Each has chosen to avoid a showdown with its extremists by not quite making the concessions most sought by the other side, despite the letter and spirit of the plan. The Palestinian Authority has not, as Israelis most desire, begun to break apart violent groups like Hamas and collect their illegal weapons; Israel has not, as the Palestinians most desire, taken forceful action to restrain settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

A senior Israeli official argued recently that expectations for the peace plan, which calls for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace and a Palestinian state in just three years, had been unrealistically high. He said that the road map was following the familiar routine of any such process, which he likened to "the standard path of an illness."

"In the beginning it's all full of hot air," he said. "The air is stuffed with white doves." But, he added, "When it comes to action, everyone starts dragging his feet, because of domestic political problems."

As violence surged last week, Israeli and Palestinian officials scrambled to demonstrate forward motion to calm things down. Under American pressure, Palestinian officials agreed to a two-week-old Israeli offer to accept security control for two more West Bank towns: Qalqiliya and Jericho.

They had previously rejected that offer as meaningless. The Israelis have no security presence in Jericho, the most tranquil West Bank city. Qalqiliya is surrounded by an Israeli barricade, its one access route controlled by an Israeli Army checkpoint.

To sweeten the deal, the Israelis offered reversible or largely symbolic concessions: to consider a further hand-over of two more West Bank cities and, according to Palestinian officials, to permit Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, to go to Gaza to mourn a sister who died last week.

Just to have the two sides talking again is no small accomplishment. But measured against the ambitious milestones set by the peace plan, the progress has been mincing.

This explains the notable lack of panic by those on each side with the most to lose under the peace plan. Far-right Israeli parties opposed to a Palestinian state have not bolted the governing coalition of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon; Hamas and Islamic Jihad have not officially abandoned a unilateral halt to hostilities sought by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister.

"It's much slower than I would expect," Ghassan W. Shakah, the mayor of the West Bank city of Nablus and a veteran of the Oslo peace process, said of the new peace plan. "Killing hope is the most serious problem we are facing."

As a yardstick for how far the parties have gone, consider what Israel offered the Palestinians a year ago: the "Gaza-Bethlehem first" plan. Israel proposed to withdraw its forces from parts of Gaza and most of Bethlehem; Palestinian security forces would take over to show they were willing and able to impose order; then Israel would make further withdrawals.

But the adversaries remained deadlocked. So the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia joined forces to formulate a far more sweeping, detailed plan, the road map. It demanded Palestinian civic reforms, a freeze on Israeli settlements, Palestinian action against terrorism and an Israeli withdrawal from all positions it seized in the last three years — all that in a first, five-month phase.

More than two months have passed since President Bush presented the plan at a summit in Aqaba, Jordan. And on the ground, Israeli forces have withdrawn from parts of Gaza and most of Bethlehem. For now, the road map looks a lot like "Gaza-Bethlehem first."

Reversible concessions have the advantage of being recyclable. In withdrawing from Bethlehem, Israel gave 4,000 Palestinians there permits to cross the Israeli checkpoints that ring that town to reach jobs elsewhere. Then, after a shooting attack wounded four Israelis near Bethlehem on Aug. 3, Israeli rescinded the permits. On Friday, to encourage the peace process, it announced it was providing 4,000 Palestinians with new permits.

It has taken tremendous American pushing to get the process this far.

It was only in anticipation of a visit from Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, that the main Palestinian factions agreed at the end of June to a three-month suspension of attacks, and Israel began its withdrawal from Gaza and then Bethlehem.

Then, early in July, the Israeli government voted to release some Palestinian prisoners — a step not specified in the peace plan — in a declared effort to lift Mr. Abbas's popularity. As an Israeli official noted, releasing prisoners, unlike yielding territory, is easily reversible; they can always be arrested again. Israel did not actually free the prisoners for a month, until Prime Minister Ariel Sharon went to Washington to meet with President Bush.

Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist at Hebrew University, said it was not a positive sign that "such a marginal issue" consumed so much high-level attention. "You need so much political clout on the American side to be squandered, so to speak, on secondary issues, that when you come to the real tough issues, how much political clout will be left — particularly as we get into an election year?" he asked.

On paper, the plan calls for bolder action.

In the first phase, Israel is supposed to freeze "all settlement activity" and "immediately" dismantle settlement outposts built since March 2001. According to the Israeli group Peace Now, whose studies American officials use to monitor settlements, there are about 60 such outposts, clusters of trailers and tents set up on hilltops to strengthen settlers' grip on the land. Dror Etkes of Peace Now said that while Israel had taken down some, settlers had set up an identical number of new ones.

On the Palestinian side, one stipulated concession was actually made before Aqaba: Mr. Arafat reluctantly appointed Mr. Abbas. Yet Mr. Abbas is still struggling with Mr. Arafat over the extent of his powers.

What Israel says it most wants is for the Palestinians to act against terrorists.

The senior Israeli official argued that the demands on both sides were not symmetrical, because the stakes of the mandated Palestinian concessions were higher. The Israeli concessions would not save lives, he said. By contrast, he said, Palestinian action against terrorism would save lives.

"O.K., we're stuck, in a way, in a vicious circle," the Israeli official said, expressing what he described as the Israeli message to the Palestinians. "You have your political constraints, we have our political constraints. What we are asking for from you is life-saving. What you are asking for from us is purely political."

But Mr. Abbas is much weaker politically than Mr. Sharon, and Palestinian officials say that without further Israeli concessions he will never be strong enough to act against Hamas or Islamic Jihad. The peace plan actually mandates that in the first phase the Palestinian Authority "begins" acting against terrorist groups, not that it finishes the work. It may fall to Mr. Bush to decide what constitutes a meaningful beginning.