On refugees, the American text unabashedly and exclusively addressed Israeli interests but failed to even mention narrative issues dear to Palestinians: recognition of refugee rights and of responsibility for the creation of the refugee problem. Clinton, Barak, and Olmert dealt to varying degrees with these issues. The Palestinians rejected all formulas as insufficient. Why Kerry believed his inferior formula would be acceptable to Abbas is a mystery.

Finally and most elaborately, we arrive at the question of borders. At least three members of Kerry's team and one informed outsider told me -- both during and after Kerry's failed effort -- that Netanyahu went "even beyond Olmert" on borders. It sounded unreliable, but I eagerly anticipated the publication of the text.

The American language stated that borders will be based on the 1967 lines with "mutually-agreed swaps whose size and location will be negotiated," so that Palestine's eventual territory will be "corresponding in size" to the West Bank and Gaza territory conquered by Israel in 1967. These positions, in some variations, are what Palestinians had heard from Clinton, Bush, Obama, Barak, and Olmert. And despite the good intentions of them all, it falls short of Abbas's basic need: that swaps -- representing a compromise on top of the Palestinian historic compromise of forfeiting 78 percent of historical Palestine and settling for the 22 percent that is the West Bank and Gaza -- will need to be equal in size and quality. And despite all past evidence that any attempt to gain an advantage for Israel of even one-half of one percent in the swap ratio is a deal breaker, Kerry and his team stretched the English language to its limits, avoiding at all cost the only word that could bring about a breakthrough: 'equal.'