(CNN) -- Woody Allen famously said that 80% of success in life is about just showing up. He's wrong. Success in life -- as in diplomacy -- is about showing up at the right time. So Is John Kerry coming to the Israeli-Hamas crisis too early, too late or just at the right time? 

The secretary of state has been eager to get into the middle of this almost since it started. He considered going last weekend from Vienna, Austria, where he had joined five other world powers in negotiations with Iran on the nuclear deal. But he smartly decided -- or was discouraged by the Egyptians who were in the middle of their own cease-fire mediation -- not to go. 

Still, the rising number of deaths primarily on the Palestinian side and the real danger of escalation of a ground incursion left him little choice. Regardless of the outcome, after Syria and Iraq, both President Barack Obama and Kerry realized that the United States couldn't sit on the sidelines like a potted plant. 

Kerry arrives in Israel 

Moreover, Kerry's hot mic comments showing his irritation at Israel's supposed "pinpoint" airstrikes in Gaza revealed a good deal more frustration than simply a desire to collect more frequent flier miles. Kerry is an activist and simply couldn't abide the fact that people were dying and the United States wasn't at least trying to stop it. 

But desire and passion won't produce a deal. Kerry proved that in his nine-month effort to negotiate an agreed framework for peace between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.  QUESTIONS:

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