Israel’s military might can eradicate Palestinian suicide bombers. Palestinian suicide bombers can counter Israel’s military might. The United States can end this horrifying conflict by staying out of it.

Credit the United States with being among the first to figure out what does not work. President Bush finally has gone beyond general observations that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat could do more to making the pointed demand that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon must do the very specific thing of withdrawing his troops from the West Bank. Although this demand was met with rebuke, a more even-handed approach has been established and expectations made clear.

This transformation of American policy will progress further with the Mideast mission undertaken by Secretary of State Colin Powell. He will meet – separately, of course – with Mr. Arafat and Prime Minister Sharon, a necessary signal of U.S. re-engagement. More importantly, that re-engagement with a longstanding goal now a realistic means of reaching it.

The goal is peace, nothing new there. The means is a Palestinian state. Not, as before, coming after peace has been attained, but as a route to peace. In meetings its with Arab leaders in Morocco and Egypt leading up to his Israel visit, Mr. Powell bluntly stated that a political solution leading to the creation of a Palestinian state made of occupied Palestinian areas must be the cornerstone of the peace process. This is a dramatic reversal of the Bush administration’s previous insistence that a cease-fire must come before talks about a Palestinian homeland could commence.

A subtler message in Mr. Powell’s remarks is that the conflict is not between right and wrong, but between two rights. Both sides can lay claim to the same land, both can complain of being threatened with extinction by the other, both have bottomless supplies of grievances. The past offers no solution.

The future, as Mr. Powell suggests, depends upon both sides making concessions previously considered unthinkable. Palestinians may modify the hope of a universal “right of return” to pre-1967 borders. Israel may abandon its post-1967 West Bank and Gaza settlements and the brutal security policies that do everything but bring security. It is no longer a question of getting Palestinians and Israelis to co-exist, but of keeping them apart.

Which brings up another transforming American moment. In his talks with Moroccan and Egyptian leaders, Mr. Powell said the United States would take the unprecedented step of putting personnel – civilian State Department personnel – in the no-man’s-land between the new Palestine and a condensed Israel as overseers of the peace. Keeping these two enemies apart long enough for the benefits of peace to become apparent is not a job for civil servants; it will take the American military, as part of an international peacekeeping force. Eventually, this obvious truth will be said out loud. Transformation takes time.