So will it be tragedy, farce or tourism? Obama\u2019s a tourist, so says the Davy Crockett of the American journalistic frontier and philosopher king of The New York Times (aka T Friedman, Esq), but he\u2019s wrong. The winner of the Nobel Prize for Public Speech-making will be at least a super-tourist \u2013 with 10,000 armed Israeli and American tour guides in Jerusalem alone. Now that, Mr President, is the wall. No, not That Wall, we\u2019re talking about the Ottoman palisade on each side of the city\u2019s Damascus Gate.<\/p>\n
But of course, if he\u2019s really going to head for the Holy Manger, Obama will have to glance \u2013 will he not? \u2013 at the real wall (aka \u201csecurity fence\/barrier\u201d). True, Berlusconi claimed he didn\u2019t see it, even if Mussolini would at least have noticed its fascist dimensions. But there you go, the \u201coutreach\u201d president is meant to be \u201cengaging\u201d people, young people. Over the heads of their masters will he speaketh unto youth. Only the youth of the Israeli and Palestinian variety don\u2019t seem to put a lot of trust in the bloke.<\/p>\n
But you\u2019ve got to feel sorry for Obama. What other statesman would prelude a trip to Israel by collecting leaders of America\u2019s Jewish community and promising \u2013 really insisting \u2013 there would be no big initiatives to worry about?<\/p>\n
We all remember the Humiliation of Saint Barack? When he went on about the 1967 border in the White House last year and Netanyahu cut him short and told him to forget about it and Obama just sat there, as mimsy as a borogrove, crushed by the Smiter Benjamin. No more talk, then, of 1967 borders or UN Security Council Resolution 242. Anyway Obama\u2019s been taking advice from the adviser who\u2019s turned out to be the biggest failure in US foreign policy since Joseph Kennedy, the much-acclaimed, utterly hopeless Dennis Ross.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll have to tolerate the usual clich\u00e9s, of course, either from Saint Barack or his press toads. That infamous peace process must once more be put \u201cback on track\u201d, or maybe we\u2019ll have to hear about the \u201croad-map\u201d \u2013 which presumably can\u2019t be put \u201cback on track\u201d since trains don\u2019t run on tarmac. And don\u2019t forget Iran, about which our hero will tell every Israeli that \u201call options are on the table\u201d. And why on \u201cthe table\u201d, for God\u2019s sake? Surely the options are in bunkers, perhaps even in the unmentionable, unprovable, unspeakable silos in which the Smiter Benjamin keeps upwards of 250 nuclear missiles. But then, we\u2019ll be reminded of all the Macbeths littered around the region; not the head-chopper of Riyadh, of course, because he\u2019s our mate, but certainly the crackpot of Tehran, the owlish Morsi, that chap in the presidential palace in Damascus and all those Salafist Calibans \u2013 or is that Talibans? \u2013 waiting to destroy Western civilisation (to which Israel belongs, does it not?)<\/p>\n
Oh yes, it\u2019s going to be a fine old ding-dong if Obama doesn\u2019t watch out. The Israelis have hidden the Palestinians away behind That Wall; and the only real historical Palestinian leader (forget Abbas) whom Obama will see will be the old Grand Mufti, sitting with Hitler in the photo at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, al-Husseini contaminating every Palestinian with Nazism to the end of time.<\/p>\n
Will Blair appear? Please God, no. There is enough of Christ\u2019s blood streaming in the Middle Eastern without Dr Faustus showing up. But it does make you wonder if anyone will dare to point out that one group \u2013 the Palestinians \u2013 are being occupied by another \u2013 the Israelis \u2013 who are unconditionally supported by another group, namely Saint Barack and his merry men. Maybe he wants to drop the \u201cpeace process\u201d thing and make a run for it. The redeployment of US foreign policy. Like Napoleon\u2019s redeployment from Moscow, or the British redeployment from Dunkirk. Makes you feel sorry for the Palestinians, doesn\u2019t it? And the Israelis, too.<\/p>\n
____________________<\/p>\n
Robert Fisk is a multiple award-winning journalist on the Middle East, based in Beirut.<\/i><\/p>\n