“Should John Kerry, given his commitment and the direness of the situation, pack his bags?” asked Aaron David Miller, former Middle East negotiator, at an event this week at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

“No,” said Shibley Telhami, an Arab-Israeli author, University of Maryland professor, and occasional advisor to the U.S. government. “We have to figure out a role to play, but the question is, where’s the influence going to come from? Who’s got the leverage with the two parties? … I don’t really see the U.S. as having a particularly strong hand in trying to stop the Israelis from doing anything they want to do in Gaza.”

Robert Danin, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that a Kerry visit would be a poor substitute for a more comprehensive effort by all of the other officials in the U.S. government to engage both sides at the working level. That could be much more effective than a high-profile, one-off high-level Kerry visit.

“Now is a time for active American diplomacy at the level below John Kerry,” he said. “I think we’ve gotten trapped into a mindset that either John Kerry does it or it doesn’t get done.”