It has been a long time since it has been possible to be hopeful about the Middle East. But the one-year peace process undertaken this week by President Obama may inspire a measure of hope because of new realities at work in the region.

One of those realities is the success in governance on the West Bank by Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. Reports from the region indicate that Palestinian security and police forces have become effective in maintaining order and curbing terrorism to the extent that the Israeli military has reduced its military presence and the number of eheckpoints to which it subjects Palestinian civilians.

Another reality is the political strength of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is the sort of hard-line leader who may be able to pull off a Nixon-to-China rapprochement that a more liberal politician would not be trusted to make.

It’s also clear that there is a diplomatic investment being made by the Obama administration. Obama has placed himself at the nexus of a tangled web of dangers, including the nuclear threat in Iran and now the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. It has been reported that Netanyahu may be willing to move further toward real peacemaking in order to keep Obama on his side with regard to the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran. Obama has shown he is willing to give a cold shoulder to Israel when he believes Israel is not being cooperative. That has strengthened Obama’s hand. His peace overtures to Iran have also strengthened his hand diplomatically as he responds to Iran’s belligerent behavior.

Obama did not start off on the right foot in the Middle East. In his first year he sought to promote talks without laying the groundwork. It became clear that Israel was not going to halt settlements without significant concessions to safeguard its security. It is still the case that Netanyahu may be unable to keep his coalition together and make peace at the same time. That’s because his coalition includes hardliners who oppose the surrender of West Bank territories occupied by Israel.

As Thomas Friedman has written for The New York Times, peace has many enemies in the Middle East. Hamas, which governs Gaza, may try to sabotage the process. Like Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon has ties to Iran and can make trouble. Further, Netanyahu’s credibility with his own right wing might not be enough to sell a peace agreement that makes concessions significant enough to satisfy the Palestinians.

But the present negotiations seem grounded in reality. They are not a Hail Mary pass, like the negotiations in the last months of the Clinton administration, which ultimately were spurned by Yasser Arafat anyway. Instead, Abbas has developed credibility that Arafat, a criminal and a terrorist, never possessed.

Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Yitzhak Rabin were both assassinated by their own people for daring to pursue peace. Factions with a stake in conflict remain strong, including Iran, whose leadership appears gripped by a dangerously irrational anti-Semitism, and Iran’s client groups.

Netanyahu is saying all the right words. He has called Abbas a “partner in peace.” “I intend to confound the critics and the skeptics,” he said in July. Who can tell to what degree the new diplomacy is meant for show or whether the momentum toward peace may become an irresistible force. Who would have predicted that Sadat and Menachem Begin would make peace? It is significant that it took Begin, a hardliner with a war record, to make it happen.

To predict a settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians would be foolish. But the new negotiations at least have the virtue of countering despair. They are a new force that has to be figured into the mix of hostility and aspiration that characterizes the Middle East. It cannot be lost on anyone in the region that prosperity and war do not go together. What a great new day it would be if Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt could become one peaceful region, all prospering together.