THE smart people are getting out of Jerusalem next week. Traffic mayhem is assured as George Bush and his entourage, about 800 souls, guarded by thousands of Israeli police, are whisked about in a fleet of armoured vehicles, complete with a bespoke helicopter brought in to fly the president to Capernaum, in northern Israel, where Jesus chose his apostles.
What is less clear is what Mr Bush will bring his hosts apart from gridlock. The man who hoped his invasion of Iraq in 2003 was going to bring peace to Palestine and democracy to the Arabs has not exactly over-achieved. So the main aims of the tour he begins on January 8th are more limited: to give a nudge to the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks he launched in Annapolis in November (see picture) and to shore up America's allies against Iran.
At the Annapolis summit, Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, promised to talk fearlessly to one another about “final status” issues such as borders, Jerusalem and refugees. But these talks have already been soured by familiar complaints. While expressing gratitude for a big boost in foreign aid inspired by Annapolis and co-ordinated by Tony Blair, Mr Abbas will no doubt tell Mr Bush that Israel's recent announcement of new tenders for housing in West Bank settlements jeopardises the fledgling talks.
Mr Bush may listen sympathetically, but is unlikely to apply strong public pressure to Mr Olmert. One reason for that is that America and Israel may be rather more focused on what to do about Iran. Efforts to impose further economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic have begun to falter since an American National Intelligence Estimate declared in December that Iran probably ceased secret work on nuclear weapons in 2003. Mr Olmert needs to know whether this finding has neutralised Mr Bush's threat of military action against Iran, and how America would react if Israel were to launch an air strike on its own. “Whatever Mr Bush tells him will be the basis for some very tough decisions in the Israeli security cabinet,” says Yaacov Amidror, a former head of the Israeli army's research division.
The American president may also be called upon to help repair relations between Israel and Egypt. Israel has lately accused Egypt of allowing the Islamists of Hamas to smuggle guns and fighters unhindered into the Gaza Strip, from where the Palestinians routinely fire rockets into Israeli towns. Egypt, furious, accuses Israel of sabotaging its relations with America.
America's Congress recently cut $100m of the $1.3 billion in annual military aid for America's biggest Arab ally. That came atop other slights that have strained Egyptian-American ties, such as Mr Bush's occasional—and nowadays increasingly infrequent—criticism of Egypt's appalling record on democratisation and human rights. Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president of the past 26 years, has been annoyed enough to break, during Mr Bush's second term, from his habit of paying yearly visits to the United States. It will not be easy for Mr Bush to mend relations with Egypt at the same time as passing on Mr Olmert's complaints about Gaza.
Mr Bush can expect a warmer reception in the Gulf, where he is to visit Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. With the exception of Kuwait, the Gulf monarchies have strongly disagreed with Mr Bush's Iraq policies but share his anxieties about the role of Iran. Last year Mr Bush promised big new arms transfers to these countries. And their misgivings about him may lately have been tempered a little by Annapolis and the apparent success of his “surge” of American troops in Iraq in restoring some calm there.
For his part, Mr Bush will want to reassure himself that the Gulf Arabs are not beginning to wobble on Iran. In December these staunch American friends invited Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to address their annual summit in Manama, and Saudi Arabia hosted him during the haj pilgrimage to Mecca. Mr Bush will be keen to make sure that his allies are not straying too far towards appeasement of the Shia power across the Gulf. His Arab friends, for their part, will try to convince Mr Bush that they believe Iran can be better managed by persuasion than by threat, or at least that incentives should be part of the diplomatic mix. They have reasons to worry. Bahrain, the home port for America's Fifth Fleet, has lately experienced unrest among its politically marginalised Shia majority.
They'll always have Petraeus
A “surprise” descent by Mr Bush into Baghdad may also be on the cards. That would enable him to congratulate General David Petraeus on having delivered a significant reduction in violence in Iraq and to scold the Shia-dominated government of the ailing Nuri al-Maliki for having failed to use this as an opportunity to move towards political reconciliation with the Sunnis.
Perhaps the only item on Mr Bush's agenda likely to meet with consensus on all his travels is Lebanon, where a year-long proxy struggle between America and Syrian-backed factions risks degenerating into outright strife. But though Mr Bush's friends in the region concur that the Syrian regime is bad, and that its Iranian-backed protégé in Lebanon, Hizbullah, is dangerous, none seems sure about how to counter Syria's deeply entrenched interests.
Mr Bush is bound to be politely received by all the region's leaders even though, like other Americans before him, he has chosen to tour the Middle East very late in his presidency (Richard Nixon paid a visit just days before resigning to avoid impeachment). Unlike previous presidents, however, Mr Bush remains an even more unpopular leader on the Arab street than he is at home. He will have to do more than kiss and smile to change that.
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