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Much ink has been spilled over Aaron David Miller's Foreign Policy magazine cover essay "The False Religion of Mideast Peace: And Why I'm No Longer a Believer." But the most important lesson to take away from the article (if you haven't already learned this lesson) is consistently overlooked.

Contrary to the hand wringing over extremists and rejectionists "hijacking the peace process," it is the "peace process" itself that has instead hijacked the foreign and domestic policy agendas of otherwise sensible government officials since it began decades ago.

Miller admits as much in his essay, poignantly so when he writes the following: "Nor can the United States afford another high-profile failure based on what a brilliant and committed Clinton told us shortly before we went to Camp David: 'Guys, trying and failing is a lot better than not trying at all.' This is an appropriate slogan for a high school football team; it's not a substitute for a well-thought-out strategy for the world's greatest power."

Harsh -- especially coming from an erstwhile peace process fanatic like Miller -- but true. How the peace process has taken so many world leaders hostage is demonstrated most maddeningly by its capture and conversion of Yitzhak Rabin.

Before being roped into a public embrace of the Oslo negotiations, what was Rabin's position on a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict? Here it is, in his own words: "The third option -- which I support and to which the Labor party adheres -- is that within the original borders of mandatory Palestine (which includes Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and what is now called the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan), there should be two states: Israel, basically a Jewish state (though not all the Jews will live there and not only Jews will comprise its population), and, to the east of it, a Jordanian-Palestinian state that would include considerable portions of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (mainly the densely populated areas)."

Otherwise known as the "Jordanian option," it is the only choice that makes any true historical and practical sense. What about the creation of a new Palestinian state? "Although Labor and the Likud differ in their views on the solution to the Palestinian question," Rabin writes in his memoirs, "we both oppose in the strongest terms the creation of a Palestinian 'mini-state' in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, first and foremost because it cannot solve anything."

Such a state, Rabin wrote, could not properly absorb the refugees, and it would be ruled by the PLO -- the "most extreme faction" in Palestinian politics. That is why, Rabin wrote, Israelis overwhelmingly opposed the creation of a Palestinian state. "And though attitudes have changed before and may well change again in the next few years, I doubt that my countrymen are likely to mellow toward the prospect of their own destruction," he added.

That last phrase, which Rabin wrote in 1979, is of particular resonance; by his own admission, by the time he arrived at the White House in 1993 to sign off on Oslo, he had -- in his words -- "mellowed toward the prospect of [his own country's] destruction."

Even in 1992, Rabin retained some of that pragmatism. In his address to the Knesset on July 13 of that year, he told the Israeli parliament that he was reorienting his political compass toward results and away from the self-gratifying treadmill of procedure for its own sake.

"From this moment on, the concept of a 'peace process' is irrelevant," Rabin announced. "From now on we shall speak not of a 'process' but of making peace."

Israeli leaders were by no means the only side making this rather obvious statement. Leila Khaled, a Palestinian legislator and terrorist (she once, ironically, hijacked an airplane for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine because they thought Rabin -- then Israeli ambassador to the U.S. -- was on board) admitted that the term "peace process" doesn't quite jive with what the Palestinian leadership is trying to accomplish.

"You know, it's a process, but it's not a peace process," Khaled told Aviation Security International on Sept. 5, 2000. "It's a political process where the balance of forces is for Israelis and not for us and they have all the cards to play with and the Palestinians have nothing to depend on, especially (when) the PLO is not united.... We are from the other side, against the whole process. Two countries, Egypt and Jordan, signed treaties with Israel, which makes it very difficult for us to gain our rights."

Most Palestinian leaders pretend there is such a thing as a peace process, because it has allowed them to get away -- literally -- with murder and enrich their Swiss bank accounts with no-strings-attached blood money from their Western allies.

But sometimes, as in the case of Leila Khaled, they offer some accidental honesty. They don't believe in the existence of a peace process, just as Yitzhak Rabin admitted that he, too, did not believe in a peace process. And one by one, remorseful diplomats like Aaron David Miller are awakening like Dr. Frankenstein to the monster they have unleashed.

Seth Mandel is the managing editor of The Jewish State.