Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) -- A pair of Air Force jets from the fleet that ferries U.S. officials touch down on a sun-bleached Egyptian runway. It's time for another round of beachside bargaining in Sharm el-Sheikh, the Red Sea town favored by reef- seeking divers and peace-seeking diplomats.

This time it's Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates who have come to the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, to press officials from Egypt and seven other Arab countries for help in Iraq. The results disappoint: The Arabs offer no formal commitments, only a statement urging Iraqis to reconcile.

It's the kind of outcome for which the fishing-village- turned-resort has come to be known. Sharm, as it's called colloquially, is a place where tourists flock to do nothing consequential. The same is true for diplomats.

``So many conferences have been held there, and none of them have proven to have had a lasting result,'' says Bruce Riedel, who, as a senior Middle East adviser to former President Bill Clinton, participated in late-night summitry there. ``Everything that's happened in Sharm has sooner or later fallen apart.''

Examples of dashed hopes stretch from the meeting on Iraq, held July 31, back to a March 1996 conference designed to salvage hopes for Arab-Israeli peace after four Palestinian suicide bombs exploded in a nine-day period.

`Big Success'

Few recall that summit, attended by leaders -- including Clinton -- from 29 countries. He called it ``a big success'' in the post-meeting news conference and said Sharm had become ``the living symbol of the new era of peace and coexistence.''

Two months later, in Israel's first direct election for prime minister, Likud Party head Benjamin Netanyahu beat the incumbent, Labor Party's Shimon Peres, sending the peace effort into a deep freeze.

The public diplomacy Sharm is famous for tends to be ``long on political symbolism, but too often short on substance,'' says David Makovsky, the director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. ``There is no substitute for direct negotiations away from the cameras.''

Sharm itself was once the subject of negotiations. In the 1970s, when Israel controlled the Sinai, Prime Minister Golda Meir refused to surrender the town -- captured with the peninsula in the 1967 Middle East war -- in any peace deal with Egypt.

Strategic Location

Israeli General Moshe Dayan, recognizing Sharm's strategic location at the mouth of the Strait of Tiran, often said it would be better to keep Sharm el-Sheikh without peace than to have peace without Sharm el-Sheikh.

Dayan would later be foreign minister when Israel surrendered the Sinai, along with Sharm, to Egypt as part of the 1979 Camp David Israeli-Egyptian accords. That peace eventually brought a new generation of would-be peacemakers to the beach.

``All the time, leaders come and go,'' says Robber Ezzat, a 27-year-old Egyptian from Cairo who works as an assistant manager at the local Starbucks. ``When Bill Clinton came, that was a big deal.''

President George W. Bush trekked there in June 2003, two months after Baghdad fell to American forces, to push for the still-elusive goal of Palestinian statehood.

U.S. and Egyptian officials say Sharm is a preferred gathering spot because it offers plenty of hotel rooms and is typically easy to secure.

Anti-Western Sentiment

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak likes to hold meetings in Sharm -- he keeps an apartment there -- since he prefers the Egypt it portrays to Cairo, where anti-Western sentiment thrives, former and current officials say.

``Sharm el-Sheikh is in many ways the anti-Egypt,'' Riedel says. ``It's Egypt without the Egyptians. There are no poor crowds, no animosity toward the West.''

Life on Naama Bay, the main beachfront drag, proceeds without much thought of the diplomats working indoors. Bikini- clad Europeans, Kuwaitis and even Sudanese tourists bake beneath date palms in the 40 degree Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) sun. Nearby, trademark signs of American culture -- T.G.I. Friday's, Hard Rock Café -- dot this artificial oasis.

While Sharm is usually tranquil, the violence that besets the region erupted there in July 2005, when three car bombs went off, killing more than 60 people.

Hedonism

Walking around the resort, that threat now seems distant. Evidence of the bloodshed was cleaned away long ago. Tourists still flock to the beaches, and construction cranes have sprouted across the landscape. Hotel rooms are being added, as well as more casinos, hedonism out of step with most of Egypt. And envoys keep coming to town, shrugging off the diplomatic debacles that preceded them.

Most notable was the October 2000 meeting Clinton convened to try to halt a month-old Palestinian intifada following the collapse of U.S.-brokered talks on Palestinian statehood.

Clinton -- then in the last weeks of his presidency -- departed Sharm with a cease-fire won after a night of tough negotiations between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Before Air Force One touched down in Washington, Palestinian-Israeli violence had exploded once again.

To contact the reporter on this story: Janine Zacharia in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, at jzacharia@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 20, 2007 17:38 EDT