How Can Anyone Believe There Is 'Progress' in the Middle East?

If reporting is, as I suspect, a record of mankind's folly, then the end of
2008 is proving my point.

Let's kick off with the man who is not going to change the Middle East, Barack
Obama, who last week, with infinite predictability, became Time's "person
of the year". But buried in a long and immensely tedious interview
inside the magazine, Obama devotes just one sentence to the Arab-Israeli
conflict: "And seeing if we can build on some of the progress, at least
in conversation, that's been made around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
will be a priority."

What is this man talking about? "Building on progress?" What
progress? On the verge of another civil war between Hamas and the
Palestinian Authority, with Benjamin Netanyahu a contender for Israeli prime
minister, with Israel's monstrous wall and its Jewish colonies still taking
more Arab land, and Palestinians still firing rockets at Sderot, and Obama
thinks there's "progress" to build on?

I suspect this nonsensical language comes from the mental mists of his future
Secretary of State. "At least in conversation" is pure Hillary
Clinton - its meaning totally eludes me - and the giveaway phrase about
progress being made "around" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is
even weirder. Of course if Obama had talked about an end to Jewish
settlement building on Arab land - the only actual "building"
that is going on in the conflict - relations with Hamas as well as the
Palestinian Authority, justice for both sides in the conflict, along with
security for Palestinians as well as Israelis, then he might actually effect
a little change.

An interesting test of Obama's gumption is going to come scarcely three months
after his inauguration when he will have a little promise to honor. Yup,
it's that dratted 24 April commemoration of the Armenian genocide when
Armenians remember the 1.5 million of their countrymen - citizens of the
Ottoman empire slaughtered by the Turks - on the anniversary of the day in
1915 when the first Armenian professors, artists and others were taken off
to execution by the Ottoman authorities.

Bill Clinton promised Armenians he'd call it a "genocide" if they
helped to elect him to office. George Bush did the same. So did Obama. The
first two broke their word and resorted to "tragedy" rather than "genocide"
once they'd got the votes, because they were frightened of all those
bellowing Turkish generals, not to mention - in Bush's case - the US
military supply routes through Turkey, the "roads and so on" as
Robert Gates called them in one of history's more gripping ironies, these
being the same "roads and so on" upon which the Armenians were
sent on their death marches in 1915. And Mr Gates will be there to remind
Obama of this. So I bet you - I absolutely bet on the family cat - that
Obama is going to find that "genocide" is "tragedy" by
24 April.

By chance, I browsed through Turkish Airlines' in-flight magazine while
cruising into Istanbul earlier this month and found an article on the
historical Turkish region of Harput. "Asia's natural garden", "a
popular holiday resort", the article calls Harput, "where churches
dedicated to the Virgin Mary rise next to tombs of the ancestors of Mehmet
the Conqueror".

Odd, all those churches, isn't it? And you have to shake your head to remember
that Harput was the centre of the Christian Armenian genocide, the city from
which Leslie Davis, the brave American consul in Harput, sent back his
devastating eyewitness dispatches of the thousands of butchered Armenian men
and women whose corpses he saw with his own eyes. But I guess that all would
spoil the "natural garden" effect. It's a bit like inviting
tourists to the Polish town of Oswiecim - without mentioning that its German
name is Auschwitz.

But these days, we can all rewrite history. Take Nicolas Sarkozy, France's
cuddliest ever president, who not only toadies up to Bashar al-Assad of
Syria but is now buttering up the sick and awful Algerian head of state
Abdelaziz Bouteflika who's just been "modifying" the Algerian
constitution to give himself a third term in office.

There was no parliamentary debate, just a show of hands - 500 out of 529 - and
what was Sarko's response? "Better Bouteflika than the Taliban!" I
always thought the Taliban operated a bit more to the east - in Afghanistan,
where Sarko's lads are busy fighting them - but you never can tell. Not
least when exiled former Algerian army officers revealed that undercover
soldiers as well as the Algerian Islamists (Sarko's "Taliban")
were involved in the brutal village massacres of the 1990s.

Talking of "undercover", I was amazed to learn of the training
system adopted by the Met lads who put Jean Charles de Menezes to death on
the Tube. According to former police commander Brian Paddick, the Met's
secret rules for "dealing" with suicide bombers were drawn up "with
the help of Israeli experts". What? Who were these so-called "experts"
advising British policemen how to shoot civilians on the streets of London?
The same men who assassinate wanted Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza
and brazenly kill Palestinian civilians at the same time? The same people
who outrageously talk about "targeted killings" when they murder
their opponents? Were these the thugs who were advising Lady Cressida Dick
and her boys?

Not that our brave peace envoy, Lord Blair, would have much to say about it.
He's the man, remember, whose only proposed trip to Gaza was called off when
yet more "Israeli experts" advised him that his life might be in
danger. Anyway, he'd still rather be president of Europe, something Sarko
wants to award him. That, I suppose, is why Blair wrote such a fawning
article in the same issue of Time which made Obama "person" of the
year. "There are times when Nicolas Sarkozy resembles a force of nature,"
Blair grovels. It's all first names, of course. "Nicolas has the
hallmark of any true leader"; "Nicolas has adopted..."; "Nicolas recognizes"; "Nicolas reaching out...". In all, 15 "Nicolases".
Is that the price of the Euro presidency? Or will Blair now tell us he's
going to be involved in those "conversations" with Obama to "build
on some of the progress" in the Middle East?