There are benchmarks, and then there are benchmarks. Here’s Daniel Levy, at Prospects for Peace:

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), a congressional investigative body in charge of evaluating the performance of government programs, just released its assessment that the Iraqi Government has only met three of the 18 political and security benchmarks set for it in June of last year.

In the same week, more depressing news has been coming out of Israel regarding the impressive lack of progress on yardsticks to which Israel was supposed to adhere in commitments it made to the US. In an exchange of letters with President Bush in April 2004, the Israeli government undertook to take action on removing the so-called unauthorized outposts established in the last years, to ease both the closure in the West Bank that strangles Palestinian economic life and the effects of the separation barrier being constructed by rerouting it …

The issue is scarcely ever raised in public by US officials — commitment, shmemitment. Don’t expect any “progress reports” on this one, and certainly forget Congress saying anything about it.

There were developments on all three issues this week — outposts, checkpoints, and the separation barrier — and, on all fronts, foot-dragging seems to have become a fine art.

Special Envoy Blair will have a Herculean task getting any real traction for pushing concrete improvements on the ground. The case has been further strengthened for arguing that incrementalism cannot work, and that what's needed is a political solution: agreed borders and an end to occupation.