Exile and the prophetic: Kerry offers Palestinians a photo-op

This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.

John Kerry is on to Nigeria with Syria on his mind.  His Israel/Palestine photo-op visit is behind him.

No, wait, he’s back in Jordan, announcing a three year plan to boost the domestic product of the West Bank by fifty percent.   He certainly travels a lot.

Three years!  Seems like a short time to accomplish such productive growth.  The question is how much of Palestine will be left in three years.

Perhaps Kerry is talking about virtual growth.  His plan is futuristic and may be more sophisticated than I can handle.  I’m stuck in the past, thinking of Jerusalem, land and such.

In an aside the New York Times comments on the specifics of Kerry’s economic plan:  “Neither Mr. Kerry nor his aides provided any details on what specific projects were envisioned, who might invest and what modifications might be required in Israeli restrictions on the West Bank for it to work.”  The Secretary’s staff said that the specifics would come “in due course.”

Will they arrive with a personally signed photo of the Secretary?

Come to think of it, the whole thing sounds like another photo-op for the Secretary.
A photo-op is a carefully planned pseudo-event.  Something seems to be going on, it should appear spontaneous, but it’s part of a script where nothing real is happening – on purpose.

Yet, in a strange way, photo-ops often become reality.  What we see becomes what is.

Can Kerry’s visits to the Middle East, announced as decisive on matters of peace and justice, since he said this is the year the window might close on the two-state solution, be so reduced?

Apparently so.

The Middle East peace process was reduced to photo-ops long ago.  We just weren’t paying attention.  The consequences are there to see – in the photo-ops that fill our lives.

At least for the powerful folks who come and go without exhibiting their power in any meaningful way, it’s – “Take my picture, let me say some words on the world stage, I’ll be gone before you know it.”

Since John Kerry is powerful and followed on the heels of the even more powerful President Obama, you have to wonder what the powerful think of their power.  Do they realize they’ve been reduced to photo-op pols?

The unscripted Obama, the unscripted Kerry, the unscripted fill-in-the-blank of those who went before them, know the unscripted score.  Then why travel these vast distances, leave their carbon footprint and have nothing substantive to show for it?

Obama and Kerry’s visit left everything where it was before they appeared.  Is that part of the script in which they played a photo-op role?

True, Obama and Kerry travel well.  Yet, even when you’re traveling high on the hog, the suffering of those on the other side of your photo-op script, the unscripted sufferers, have to get you down at some point.   After meeting the leaders, inspecting the honor guards, making your speeches, visiting memorials, museums and churches, I’d want to leave my entourage and security detail behind and get a taste of what’s really going on. 

Otherwise you become the photo-op pol you swore you’d never become.
Coming up after Israel and Jordan is a round of Syrian photo-ops featuring the wheeling/dealing of the “peace” makers in a conference setting.  It’s interesting – and telling – that the Cold War dénouement is coming back for a second round.
Syria is being carved up and parceled out – with the Cold War powers presiding.  Which tells us that the world changes and doesn’t.   Photo-ops come and go then return.

I wonder what the photo-ops will mean to the displaced Syrians let alone what the dead might think if they had survived.

Many of the dead have been the occasion for photo-ops themselves.

Death in proxy wars is now reduced to photo-op opportunities for every side that wants their day in the photo-op sun.

When the displaced and the dead are yet another occasion for the cascading images that fill the lives of the living we have to wonder if we, too, have been reduced to a pseudo-event.

Perhaps we’ve come to view ourselves that way, as viewers of photo-ops.  If everything goes our way, perhaps once in our life-time, we’ll become a photo-op, too.

Alive or dead, it makes our pseudo-life appear real.

When you think photo-ops are just for the politicians of every stripe and faction, think again.