Those who have reached the conclusion that President Barack Obama can walk on water say she can; others who have not arrived at any such presumption say she would not. The optimistic view of history remains, as always, the antithesis of the pessimistic version. So, quite what has Hillary Rodham Clinton achieved by visiting the Middle East?
Paradoxically, the answer to that question lies elsewhere than in the Middle East. Precisely, it needs to be found in the White House, where President Obama has surrounded himself with all manner of envoys - some have called them "tsars" - who will eventually provide some form of synthesis for the foreign policy he wishes to put in place.
The wider argument goes that the Middle East cannot be treated in isolation from, say, Russia or from the outcome of the war in Afghanistan, still less from developments in Iran. Not finally by any means, a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian question may well depend on whether Mrs Clinton can overcome a character fault she has often been accused of: her divisiveness.
That she has been given a key role as Secretary of State needs to be weighed against Mr Obama's decision to make full use of his Vice-President on matters of foreign affairs as well as of men of the calibre of Richard Holbrook and George Mitchell. So, if Mrs Clinton attended a Nato meeting on the way back to Washington, Joe Biden will be in Brussels on Tuesday to provide more information on America's role in the world under President Obama. As to whether she can swing a Middle East peace, one would need to continually ask what all the President's other players are about as they tour the world "to listen".
The Secretary of State demonstrated during her visit to Israel and Palestine (the West Bank - she chose not to meet, still less talk, to Hamas) that she wants the world to hear her views: Yes to a two-state conclusion, the states meaning Israel and Palestine-of-the-Palestinian Authority). She said nothing new, here. What she did say, delighted President Mahmoud Abbas, naturally, and angered Hamas and Iran, which swiftly accused her of bias and partiality.
As for Israel, the country is now in the process of having a government formed by the right-wing Benjamin Netanyahu. He believes in the ongoing creation of Israeli settlements, which is clearly a no-no for Palestinians and which Mrs Clinton called "unhelpful".
The truth is that what are being spun as "exploratory talks" are not that, at all. The US has learned nothing that the previous Administration did not know. Its stand on Hamas remains what it was and Mrs Clinton's views on Iran - "It is clear that Iran intends to interfere in the internal affairs of all these people (in the region) and try to continue their efforts to fund terrorism, whether it is Hizbollah or Hamas or other proxies." - could have been taken word for word from her predecessor, Condoleeza Rice.
As at this moment in time, the new Secretary of State is far from providing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her hope must be that other stakeholders in the area - Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the Arab League generally - will act on Hamas while the US works on Israel to bring about and ensure the environment necessary for peace.