Sergei Rogov, head of the Institute of the U.S. and Canada, told RIA Novosti that President George W. Bush is hardly able to do this now, as he has little time before a new administration comes into power in Washington.
"Ultimately, the president will have to put pressure on Israel, for it to make even minimal concessions. However, it is very doubtful that under the current conditions, Bush has sufficient political capital," he said.
The presidential campaign has essentially started in the U.S., and the country's diplomacy in the Middle East follows a certain cycle, Rogov said.
"A new administration arrives, it starts to deal with the problem, then it puts forward its plan for regulation, then Israel starts resisting, and after that elections come along in the U.S., and all political forces start competing to be Israel's biggest ally," the analyst said.
The U.S. now seems to be in the fourth part of this cycle, he added.
"The U.S. can find a way out of the deadlock by political means within the next few months, but time is running short and developments may lurch out of control soon," Rogov warned.
He said that during the Cold War any regional conflict was regarded as a global Soviet-American standoff, but this one is of an entirely different nature.
"Then we supported one side and the Americans supported the other. But the Arab-Israeli conflict has its own roots. The end of the Soviet-American standoff did not lead to an automatic resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict," Rogov said.
Speaking on possible scenarios in the Middle East, he said a civil war could begin in Palestine and Lebanon.
Earlier in the week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who will travel to Washington early next month to attend a ministerial meeting of four international mediators in the Arab-Israeli conflict, also warned against the threat of a civil war in Palestine.
"The situation in Palestine remains very complicated," Lavrov said. "Efforts to resume talks with Israel encounter the threat of a civil war in Palestine. We [the Middle East Quartet, comprising Russia, the U.S., UN and EU] should help stop the conflict between Fatah and Hamas and external attempts to provoke confrontations between the movements."
The radical Islamic group Hamas, which is still considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. and the EU, gained a majority in the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) after defeating President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction in polls a year ago.
The latest Mideast Quartet ministerial meeting took place on the sidelines of a UN General Assembly session in New York in September 2006.
The participants expressed their support for efforts by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to form a national unity government and urged radical Islamist movement Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce violence, and implement the 2003 "roadmap" peace plan, which provides for a two-state solution to the Mideast conflict.
