FEW people are giving US Secretary of State John Kerry’s fourth and latest visit to the Middle East much chance of success in rekindling the fading embers of a Palestinian settlement. And just to make sure, the Israelis have once again produced a diplomatic snub for Washington, to demonstrate that they have no intention of displaying any flexibility.

The Netanyahu government has announced that it is going to give retrospective permission to four illegal West Bank settlements, which even the Israeli government had refused to authorize. And just to make sure that the defiant message goes home, Netanyahu has also for good measure approved the construction of 300 further Israeli settler homes in these illegal enclaves.

This is yet another Israeli betrayal of their American ally. The moratorium on further illegal settlement building, may not have been declared publicly, but it was understood by Washington that it would stay in place, not least to ensure that the Palestinian side would remain prepared to come to the negotiating table.

For their part, the Palestinian administration of President Mahmoud Abbas had undertaken to put on hold its campaign for wider recognition of its statehood at international organizations, following its successful upgrading of its UN General Assembly status to “non-member state.”

The Israeli action is calculated not merely to spike Kerry’s diplomatic guns, but also to inflame Palestinian public opinion against the concessions that Abbas has been prepared to make in the cause of a peaceful settlement. It makes the Palestinian president’s position very difficult, as indeed the Israelis intended. To the international community, it is essential that the Palestinian side displays flexibility. For the ordinary Palestinian, crushed, humiliated and frustrated by years of occupation, there may be a quiet anger that once again their leadership has been persuaded to be patient and open-handed, only to have the Israelis spit in its face and in the face of their Washington friends.

The further benefit for Israel of its calculated and cynical policy is that it will also cause many Palestinians to think that the rejectionist view of Hamas and the determination of its extremist supporters to return to an armed struggle, is the only way forward. This in its turn could jeopardize the slow rapprochement between Hamas and Al-Fatah, which of course will also serve Israeli interests very well.

There is of course only one way that Kerry can hope to cut through the Gordian knot that has tied up any future progress on the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, to which the Kingdom contributed so significantly. That is for the United States to finally stop playing softball with their ungrateful Israeli ally. Washington needs to threaten to cut off the financial and logistical support that is important, though no longer essential for the country’s survival. Barack Obama is no friend of the abrasive and rude Netanyahu. The US president has been infuriated by the Israeli leader’s arrogance and the gap between his public statements and private actions.

But taking on Netanyahu and the Zionist hawks, in the hope of forcing them to get real over the Peace Initiative, carries many risks, risks which may extend beyond the obvious political dangers even to the personal safety of the president.

The Zionist lobby in the United States is as potent as ever. It is now joined by the powerful US Christian fundamentalist churches, for whom Israel can never do any wrong. Obama may not need to worry about standing for re-election, but there are those in the Democrat party machine, who have substantial political investments that they could lose if they are exposed to a Zionist-sponsored backlash. The president could not act alone. Given the deep divisions in Congress, which have effectively paralyzed the US domestic political agenda, it is hard to see Obama being able to muster sufficient political support for any measures designed to oblige the Israelis to approach peace negotiations seriously.

Therefore Kerry’s visit to the region is almost certainly doomed. The only new item on the agenda is the possibility floated last month by the Arab League, that there might be a territory swap around the 1967 borders, which would be mutually agreed. This could involve some of the illegal settlements.

But once again, this is yet another concession from the Arabs. By contrast, nothing is coming back from the Israeli side, except perhaps the muffled sound of chuckling, as Netanyahu continues the long-standing policy of stringing along Washington and the rest of the international community about its desire for a negotiated peace, while doing absolutely nothing to help bring that about.