Air marshals cost $200m per arrest

Here’s an intriguing statistic: since the introduction of air marshals on US airlines after 9/11, just four people have been arrested on suspicion of terrorism on-board an airliner. That represents a cost of $200m per arrest.

There are 3,000-4,000 air marshals currently employed aboard US airliners. This is but one of a myriad of the massive costs of not achieving peace.

Now I recognise that the causes for which people might wish to blow up an airliner are not all directed against the Middle East issue.

But as I have blogged before, the failure to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict not only costs cash, but also roots despair and discontent right across the globe.

Hence my naive excitement last week that Obama had sent his Vice President, Joe Biden for a six-day sojourn in the region.

I warned that his visit coincided with the tangible bulldozing of some 22 Palestinian homes in Arab East Jerusalem.

For once I under-exaggerated. Israel announced not 22, but 1,600 new Jewish homes on the very day poor old Joe landed.

It was a fantastic and brazen slap across America’s face – in US-Israeli relations, unprecedented.

Prime Minister Netanyahu appears not to have been behind the stunt – right wing factions in his already right wing administration are being blamed.

But, in a speech in the Knesset yesterday, Mr Netanyahu, being the populist he is, has quickly clambered aboard the announcement. Mr Biden is now home, and the White House is reportedly ‘incandescent’.

Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has lost patience. Undiplomatic language has been deployed with Israel demanding an explanation.

The crisis has currently detonated any likelihood of a restart on the Middle East talks. It has also stiffened America’s demands of Israel.

They now want the entire status of Jerusalem itself to be right there at the top of the agenda if and when talks restart.

We are now at the crunch point where Obama’s true intentions in the Middle East will at last be tested to the full. Is he serious? Or will he recede into the same supine condition ultimately achieved by his predecessors?

No American administration has ever talked tough, let alone acted tough with Israel. Few even pretend that it is likely this time. And where is Europe in all this? Where is Britain? You have it, absolutely nowhere.

I guess the US airline companies won’t be getting rid of their air marshals any time soon. Nice work if you can get it.