The Israeli-Palestinian-Arab-American summit conference, originally scheduled for late summer or early autumn, has now been set for late November in Annapolis. Its postponement, caused by insufficient progress in pre-summit Israeli-Palestinian talks, is a discreet way of admitting that it should never have been scheduled at all.

Summits, as is well known in the diplomatic trade, should never be counted on to negotiate anything: When such demands are made of them, the likelihood of their failing is greater than that of their succeeding, and the potential dangers of failure can be no less than the potential benefits of success.

What better example is there than the failed Israeli-Palestinian summits of Camp David and Taba in 2000-2001, which led to a bloody five-year Palestinian campaign of terror, thousands of lost lives, and a total breakdown in communication between the two sides?

Indeed the only good reason for summits, as the diplomats also know, is to provide gala occasions for celebrating what negotiations have already concluded. Summits are a place for festive banquets, not for all-night bargaining sessions desperately trying to reach an agreement that the banqueters can toast.

Negotiating and deadlines do not go well together. True, they are sometimes constrained, as in labor disputes that begin with a strike date, to co-exist. But when two sides negotiate under time pressure, time itself inevitably becomes a weapon in the hands of one, if not both, and is used to bludgeon the other into submission: “You have X minutes, hours, or days in which to agree with me,” says the negotiator waving his weapon — “or else!”

This is a tactic that the Palestinians are now using in regard to the planned conference in Annapolis — and not once, but twice.

In the first place, they are telling Israel that they are not coming to the conference at all unless agreement has been reached on the core issues “in principle,” if not in precise detail. Although it is not yet necessary, they say, to draw an exact border between Israel and the future Palestinian state, it must be agreed now that this border will leave Israel with no more than 2% or 3% of the West Bank, in return for which it must cede equal amounts of its own territory.

Although the map re-dividing Jerusalem can be drawn later, Israel has to concede now that there will be such a map. Although the number of Palestinian refugees to be admitted to the Jewish state is something that can be left for later, Israel must accept now that the refugees themselves will have a say in the matter, etc., etc.

And if Israel doesn’t agree, concede, or accept? Then, say the Palestinians, we’re not coming to President Bush and Condoleezza Rice’s Annapolis party — and George and Condy aren’t going to like that one bit.

But that’s only half of it. There is still another demand that Israel — so say the Palestinians — must meet if the November summit is to take place. It must agree in advance to set a time limit on how long negotiations on what has been decided “in principle” will take. Six months is what the Palestinians are currently calling for, although they will no doubt settle for nine or twelve. And if negotiations take longer?

Presumably, we then can have the pleasure of another intifada.

This is not the way to do things, and Israel should be firm that it is not going to do them this way.

In theory, of course, the Palestinians — whose impatience for statehood, even if they themselves are the main reason they have not yet gotten it, is understandable — have just as much to risk from a time limit as does Israel. Israel, too, can say, “Agree or else!” Yet the Israeli “or else” is not very intimidating.

What, after all, is Israel going to do if negotiations with the Palestinians run into overtime? Declare war on them? Turn the Arab world against them? Tell its friends in the White House whose hearts are set on brokering a Middle East peace, “Sorry but it’s not going to be”?

Better not to get into such a situation than to have to look for ways out of it.

The fact of the matter is that, in terms of reaching an agreement that will last, unlimited time is precisely what both Israel and the Palestinians need to have. Time — 40 years of it since the 1967 war — already has done a great deal to help resolve the conflict between them: The gaps on numerous issues have narrowed from great to small less because of specific negotiations over them than because in the course of these years Israelis and Palestinians have gradually been forced to give up many of their cherished illusions, to understand their strengths and limitations better, to assess how much punishment they are able or prepared to take, to distinguish between what is possible and what is not, to realize where the other side can afford to compromise and where it can’t, and slowly to let public opinion in their respective communities come to the same conclusions.

This process has been going on for a long time and may have to go on for a while longer before it has run its course. How much longer? That’s anybody’s guess. It could be two years, or five years, or 10 or 20.

But time, despite endless pronouncements to the contrary, according to which the last “window of opportunity” is always about to shut, has never worked against peace in the Middle East. It has always, if often agonizingly slowly, worked for it. And given a chance, it will continue to do so. Putting a cap on it is the worst thing one could do.

Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.