It is possible to set up a menu item with hook_menu that points to an existing path? The accepted answer here by marcvangend explains how to it with hook_menu_alter.  His method works, even if you skip step one (the block View).

But just out of interest: Can you do this by means of hook_menu?

So far, I've tried to put the following in hook_menu:

$items['node/%node/delete'] = array(
  'title' =&gt; 'Delete',
  'access callback' =&gt; TRUE,
  'type' =&gt; MENU_LOCAL_TASK,
);


However, that did not have any effect.

(Just to make clear, I just want the "Delete" tab, pointing to this existing path node/%node/delete.  I don't want to put a view on it.)
You can only use hook_menu() if you're defining new paths, ideally, paths that are provided by the module implementing the hook.

If you want the Delete link to show up as a tab, hook_menu_alter is definitely the way to go, and adjusting the context value is what does the magic - as per Step 2 from marcvangend's post. If you want to change the "access callback" as per your snippet, then you can do that in hook_menu_alter() too, although I'm not sure why you'd want to let anyone delete pages?