(Recasts, adds quotes, background, details)

By Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON, Oct 30 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits the Middle East next week to try to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace despite the recognition that there is little chance of a deal this year, diplomats said on Thursday.

The State Department said Rice would leave on Wednesday, the day after the U.S. presidential election, and travel to Egypt, Jordan, the West Bank and Israel, whose parliamentary election has effectively put the peace process on hold.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Rice would "discuss efforts to achieve positive and lasting peace in the region" but he made no mention of U.S. President George W. Bush's goal, announced at last year's Annapolis, Maryland, peace conference, of securing a peace deal by the end of the year.

Wood acknowledged that an Israeli parliamentary election, which is expected to be held on Feb. 10, had "complicated" the the peace effort. A senior Bush administration official said the Israeli election meant that a deal was all but impossible this year.

"The reality is Israel is going to have an election and that makes the search for an agreement on the calendar that we had hoped for probably not realistic," said the official, who asked not to be named.

"That does not mean you can make no progress ... We believe it's possible to continue to advance this," he added. "The principle here has to be to protect, sustain and try to advance the negotiations -- but not at any price."

The official said the United States would not outline its own ideas for how to solve the six-decade conflict, saying that the Bush administration did not wish to do anything that might harm the peace talks.

The State Department said Rice was expected to meet the Quartet of Middle East mediators that includes the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States.

'FINAL NAIL IN THE COFFIN'?

Israeli, Palestinian and Western officials said the Quartet meeting was scheduled to take place in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh and that Israeli and Palestinian officials would brief the group on their peace negotiations, sketching out where gaps have been narrowed and where they remain.

A diplomat who follows the issue said the administration had pivoted from trying to strike a deal this year to trying to ensure the next U.S. president -- Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama -- inherits a functioning peace process.

"They have sort of shifted gears from seeking an agreement to a bridging mode -- how to bridge where we are now to where we will be with the next administration," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition that he not be identified.

"The flux in Israel was probably the final nail in the coffin" for Bush's goal of reaching a deal this year, he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas resumed peace talks under a year ago under Bush's sponsorship but there have been no tangible signs of progress.

Beyond the intrinsic difficulty of resolving such controversial issues as the delineation of borders, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem, the effort has been hindered by the political divisions on both sides.

Olmert, who is under a cloud because of a corruption investigation, announced in September that he would resign.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, also of the centrist Kadima party, was unable to form a coalition to become prime minister, forcing an election that is likely to pit her against Benjamin Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud party.

The Palestinians are also split between the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and the West Bank, where Abbas' Fatah movement holds sway.

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell in Washington and by Adam Entous in Jerusalem, Editing by Jackie Frank)

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