How many of you remember Monty Python's dead parrot sketch? It was a wonderful comedic routine that transcended nationality and culture. Timeless in its appeal, it is often cited in doomed or desperate situations when a bit of gallows humour is needed.

I was reminded of it on the road to Damascus the other day as news filtered through that the Middle East peace talks had stalled and failed; well, I wonder who saw that one coming? Yes, Barack Obama's peace initiative is even deader than the Norwegian Blue parrot "bought from this 'ere emporium" by John Cleese. Just like the Monty Python pet-shop owner, played so brilliantly by Michael Palin ("It's stunned; it's pining for the fjords!"), Obama is in complete denial that the peace talks are a busted flush. Can he resurrect them, like Michael Palin tried to resurrect the extremely dead parrot? Can he do it? No, he can't!

My traveling companions, a gaggle of assorted journalists and travel writers from various media outlets, expressed no surprise either. Later that day we walked through the ancient ruins of the oasis city of Palmyra north-east of Damascus, and I began to realise then just how insignificant Israel really is in the grand scheme of things in the Arab world.

The state is just over 60 years old and in that time it has never known a day of peace for itself or its neighbours. It is in a permanent state of advanced paranoia and is always on a war footing, real or imagined. That sort of negative energy and existence can never be sustained for very long but, in the Middle East, time is measured in centuries not months and years.

Israel & Monty Python's Dead Parrot

There is no peace process. As Chas Freeman, formerly US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, puts it, the process is a hand-maiden of Israeli expansion, rather than a driver for peace. What we have is much twisting of the narrative as all sides attempt to bend it around their take on events. Freeman sought to cut through all that twisting in an address to the staff of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in September.

Outlining the Israeli dependence on Washington, he told his audience: "Ironically, Palestinians too have developed a dependency relationship with America. This has locked them into a political framework over which Israel exercises decisive influence - they have been powerless to end occupation, pogroms, ethnic cleansing and other humiliations by Jewish soldiers and settlers. Nor have they been able to prevent their progressive confinement in checkpoint-encircled ghettos on the West Bank and the great open-air prison of Gaza."

Of the process itself, Freeman was withering - "The perpetual processing of peace without the requirement to produce it has been especially appreciated by Israeli leaders. It has enabled them to behave like magicians, riveting foreign attention on meaningless distractions as they systematically removed Palestinians from their homes, settled half-a-million or more Jews in newly vacated areas of the Occupied Territories and annexed a widening swathe of land to a Jerusalem they insist belongs only to Israel."

Israel And Palestine and Controlling The Narrative