If you blink you might miss the last chance for peace in our time. At least that’s what Secretary Blinken is saying as he launches his latest Mideast trip. “This is a decisive moment, probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a cease-fire and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security,” he said at Jerusalem this morning. This is the oldest Mideast gambit. 

At last we checked, the phrases “Mideast” and “last chance” headlined 797 stories in recent decades. Yet, a chance for what? And who would suffer by missing it? As Mr. Blinken landed in Israel yesterday, a man carried a bomb in a knapsack to southern Tel Aviv, where he entered from Nablus in the West Bank. He killed only himself because a premature detonation saved the lives of dozens of nearby synagogue-goers who celebrated love on Tu B’Av.