Two significant events occurred this week. Both concerned the Middle East. First, President Barack Obama declared the Iraq war was over, at least for the U.S. It isn't, of course, because we still have 50,000 troops in the country, though they are not supposed to engage in combat unless in self-defense. Those 50,000 are expected to be gone by the end of next year, leaving Iraq to its tortured self. In the meantime, that deeply divided nation is still wracked with violence, and that almost inevitably will mean further U.S. and Iraqi casualties. We may hope the war is over; Iraqis, I suspect, think otherwise.

In his speech to the nation, the president did not sound the clear, high notes of a silver trumpet. How could he? Trumpets proclaim victory, and that we haven't got. Instead, we heard the more muted tones of a somber symphony, one acknowledging the sacrifice of thousands of young Americans, that of our allies and ultimately that of the Iraqi people. We don't celebrate sacrifice; we can only honor it.

The second event is, I believe, even more important than the first. The president finally was able to restart the Middle East peace talks with face-to-face meetings in Washington between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. There hadn't been any in more than 18 months. Obama spent more than a year trying to relaunch the talks, first getting off on the wrong foot with Netanyahu and then trying to persuade Abbas that even a temporary Israeli moratorium on new settlement building is better than none, and that Abbas should attend. In the event, both men showed up this week in Washington, as did Jordan's King Abdullah, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as the representative of the European Quartet. They dined in the White House on Wednesday evening, along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and special Middle East envoy George Mitchell, formerly a U.S. senator from Maine. They got down to business the next day, and their first agreement was to continue the talks in two weeks time, possibly in Egypt. Score one for Obama, a score he desperately needs.

The talks got under way amid widespread pessimism that anything constructive could be achieved. After all, we have been this way many times, once or twice getting tantalizingly close to an agreement, only to see a potential agreement fall apart. Why should it be any different this time, especially with a hard-line Israeli prime minister traditionally opposed to an independent Palestine, and a greatly weakened Palestinian leader whose own territories are split between the occupied West Bank, run by the Palestinian Authority, and the Gaza Strip, run by Hamas, the radical and rejectionist group opposed to any talks whatsoever?

There's no gainsaying those facts. And yet, something is different. In fact, two things are different. First, something has happened to Benjamin Netanyahu. In his opening words at the White House, and later at the State Department, he seemed forthrightly committed to an independent Palestine consistent with the needs of Israeli security. He looked directly at President Abbas and called him "my partner in peace." When did that ever happen? Has he finally "got religion?" Or, as the head of a right-wing coalition deeply suspicious of these talks, is he suddenly exercising the authority he has as the most powerful prime minister in many years? Who else is there on the right who could successfully challenge him? The coalition may be more beholden to him than he is to the coalition. Moreover, if a right-wing hard-liner is prepared to negotiate, where does that leave the left, long the political champions of peace talks?

Then, too, even if Abbas is in a greatly weakened position, that is not true of the Palestinian territories themselves. It is true that the Gaza Strip has in many ways been an open-air prison under a radical leadership that in fact mutinied against the Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank. But in recent months, the Israeli stranglehold has begun to weaken, and the more Gaza life returns to normal, the more Gazans may begin to question Hamas radicalism. Moreover, the West Bank economy has been growing at some 8.5 present annually despite the worldwide recession. Foreign investment capital is being drawn to the West Bank. And, perhaps most significantly, Palestinian security forces, with U.S. training, are evolving into an effective peace-keeping force, acknowledged as such by the Israelis themselves. We at last have the firm beginnings of a nation state on the West Bank. That is crucial. It means that down the pike, the Israelis will have a government to deal with and not just a powerful and sometimes unruly liberation organization.

Given the history of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, optimistic is not a word we can use about the current talks. The obstacles remain formidable. And yet an emerging Palestinian state and a powerful Netanyahu may surprise us all.

William M. Stewart, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer and Time magazine correspondent, lives in Santa Fe.