WASHINGTON—Ehud Olmert can no longer be dismissed as "His Accidency," a small-time politician who achieved the top job because his larger-than-life predecessor was stricken by a stroke. At Annapolis, Olmert looked every inch the prime minister of his country, successor to David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin.

I think Olmert's transformation began when he decided that his goal as prime minister was not merely to stay in office (in itself no easy task), but to finally end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like Rabin, he seems less interested in playing "gotcha" with the Palestinians than in reaching agreement.

Who can say how long this will last?

Already, some Israelis are saying that Israel need not fulfil its Roadmap obligations until the Palestinians fulfil theirs. But if Israel sticks to that interpretation, the process will be stillborn. The genius of the Roadmap is that it requires Israel and the Palestinians to act simultaneously. It does not permit either side to duck its commitments by saying the other guy has to go first.

My guess is that Olmert will not evade his obligations, but the impetus will have to come from within Olmert himself. Evidence for this claim was hear on Wednesday, when Olmert said: "status quo is a disaster… If we don't do something, we will lose the possibility of the existence of two states. We will be an apartheid state. Jewish organisations in America will be the first to come out against us because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents."

From Israel's point of view, it's good news that Palestinians are demanding only the right to statehood in 22 percent of historic Palestine, rather than simply demanding "one man, one vote." Imagine if the Palestinians petitioned for Israeli citizenship rather than statehood—a binational Israel would nullify its status as a Jewish state.

Olmert is determined not to let that happen. He is a right-wing pragmatist, not a left-wing idealist. He wants Israel to get rid of the territories because retaining them will undo the Jewish state's Jewish identity. In their hearts, plenty of leftists could live with a democratic, binational Israel—so long as it's secure. Not Olmert. He is an old Herut man, a Jabotinskyite, and his Israel has to be Jewish.

His fear is precisely what will impel him toward peace. To his credit, Olmert also seems to have developed a genuine empathy with Mahmoud Abbas, and an understanding of Palestinian suffering. He is now a man on a mission. Like Rabin, and unlike Barak, he approaches the Palestinian leadership not as an emperor relates to the natives, but with respect.

Nevertheless, the Annapolis process is not much more than the Roadmap plus. The plus is the all-important monitoring mechanism, by which Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians decide together if the two sides are living up to their commitments. In its original Roadmap, there was no such mechanism, leaving the two sides to point fingers while the death toll mounted.

Will the mechanism actually work? It should because it did once before.

Back in 1996-1997, the Oslo process was collapsing due, in large part, to Hamas' efforts to undermine the peace process and Yasir Arafat. The wave of terror had one success: It caused the surprise defeat of Shimon Peres, who had succeeded the assassinated Yitzhak Rabin. Hamas and its allies wanted Netanyahu to win because they hoped he would abandon Oslo; and a slight majority of Israeli voters chose Netanyahu because they thought he could end the terrorism.

But Netanyahu understood that he couldn't do it alone or even in cooperation with the Palestinians. Netanyahu needed the United States to help.

Here is what the CIA's main official on the ground told me about US involvement and how it evolved in 1997 and after.

"The Israelis turned to us and requested that we act as a go-between… This was basically an admission that they could not do their job… For a number of months, we became the go-between.

"We'd hear 'Go tell those people such and such.' Literally, they were having no conversations. Both sides were talking to us but they were not talking to each other."

But Dennis Ross and other key policymakers wanted Israelis and Palestinians to start dealing directly with each other. But there was simply no trust.

"Somebody suggested that the Israelis and Palestinians talk to each other, but in the presence of the Americans. So we started these trilateral meetings in which I chaired meetings with the Shin Bet and the IDF, and all the Palestinians. These meetings were pretty rocky. They shouted at each other but they resumed the dialogue. They went off in corners and whispered to each other."

Within a few months, the American presence was superfluous. Although the CIA was in the room, the two sides worked seamlessly together to produce a security plan that almost completely eradicated terrorism.

During the next three years—from fall 1997 until the autumn of 2000, after the Camp David summit failed—not a single Israeli civilian was killed in a suicide bombing (in contrast to the hundreds killed previously).

There is no reason to think that it can't happen again. Contrary to all the propaganda, CIA-monitored Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation gave Israel the three safest years in its history. Ask any Israeli, or anyone who visited Israel, what 1999 felt like.

And then look at what the last seven years have been. If you don't understand that ending the occupation and achieving peace with the Palestinians is better, you are no friend of Israel. No way.