For well over 40 years, the US positioned itself, seemingly earnestly, as an honest broker of the Arab-Israeli conflict, sponsoring peace conferences all the way from Geneva to Madrid, from the presidential retreat at Camp David to the Wye River Plantation, from Sharm Al Shaikh in the Sinai Desert to the Rose Garden at the White House lawn. All came to naught.

But then along came President Barack Obama, with his rhetorical flair for moral optimism, his classy demeanour and his liberal views, who promised Arabs and Muslims in a major speech in Cairo last year that his administration, working impartially and tirelessly, would not only seek an equitable solution to the conflict, but rise above previous administrations' unyielding support for Israel's brutal wars against its neighbours and its colonisation of Arab land.

I know what you're thinking: Oh, no! Not another tiresome column about how yet another American president has knuckled under, eaten humble pie and taken it on the chin when it came to the nitty-gritty of confronting Israeli excesses.

Embarrassing display

Consider the meeting recently between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where the American president was falling all over himself to express his government's undying fealty to the Zionist state under any and all circumstances. Obama gushed: "The bond between the United States and Israel is unshakable ... We are committed to that special bond ... Our relationship has broadened [and is] continuing to improve ..." And then he gushed and pandered some more: "I've trusted Prime Minister Netanyahu since I met him before I was elected president ..." And all these tedious platitudes after Israel had humiliated the United States by expanding its colonies in the West Bank and building new Jewish housing units, while demolishing Arab homes, in occupied East Jerusalem!

Outside the White House, as the American president beamed at his guest, a group of protesters gathered. One of them, a New Yorker, shouted into a bullhorn: "We want to appeal to Obama to stand up for once, to get a little vertebrate in his invertebrate back and speak to Netanyahu in no uncertain terms". Then he dismissed the chief executive as a "president who by all indications is what we call in the Bronx a wussie — a person who will not stand up for what he knows is right".

So what gives with Obama? Why has he reneged on his promises? Why does the Israeli entity continue to receive such deference from US presidents and leading politicians at a time when this entity is clearly undermining America's standing among its allies and friends in the European world, the Arab world and the Islamic world? To be sure, Obama, not altogether an uninformed leader, knows all that. But he is also captive to the dictates of domestic politics. The mere hint, for example, that a rupture now exists between the US and Israel could have a disastrous effect for Democrats in the midterm elections, as Republicans present the case of a Democratic administration that is "insufficiently committed to Israel", or raise the issue as part of a broader critique of Obama's foreign policy.

Joe Sestak, the Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, for example, is under great pressure for merely signing a letter criticising Israel's blockade of Gaza and for appearing at a fundraiser for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. His prospects seem dim, which is not good news for his party.

Uniquely American situation

These are not considerations that would be on the minds of candidates running for office, say, in European countries, but in the US they are very much so. The various pressure groups working on behalf of Israel are especially powerful, adept and skilled at what they do, though they often influence policy in ways that are harmful for the national interest, and that do not make sense on either strategic or moral grounds. But that is, as we say, the nature of the beast. And no one in the US government, from the president on down, is able, willing or even knows how to slay that beast. When it breathes dread, fire and brimstone, you "duck and cover". We all remember what president Jimmy Carter was reduced to, declaiming after he was criticised for supporting the provocative idea of a "Palestinian homeland" while he was still in office: "I would rather commit political suicide than harm Israel."

And what about those of us who watched Obama in Cairo last year and were convinced that he had a high-profile initiative in mind and the guts to see it through? We were, very simply, deluded. And yes, after all, this has indeed turned out to be, like a Jerry Seinfeld segment, a "column about nothing".

I should've written instead about, heck, let me see, my visit to Cirque de Soleil. That would have been a less dreary subject to write about than about how Arabs, after well over four decades, are still tilting at windmills in their phantom pursuit of an American sponsored "peace process".

Fawaz Turki is a veteran journalist, lecturer and author of several books, including The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile. He lives in Washington, D.C.