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Today’s foreign affairs session in the Commons was telling – in a number of ways.
Most immediately noticeable was the fact that questions about Israel and the Palestinians were not reached for half an hour. Sure, the international picture is packed at the moment and the Syrian refugee crisis and other issues were understandably raised first.
But the shuffling of the Middle East’s most intractable conflict down the pecking order also shows the evident lack of desire on the British political scene to weigh in.
As Tim Marshall pointed out in last week’s JC , there is little interest internationally in attempting to bridge the gap between the two sides.
When the questions did eventually come, they were largely from pro-Israel Tory backbenchers, raising their concerns about incitement by the Palestinian Authority.
For all their chirping away on Twitter and signing of petitions, Labour MPs were few and far between in the attempts to lambast Israel.
Perhaps the promotion to leader of the party of one of their most outspoken figures on the topic has dented their effectiveness in such sessions?
That said, Sir Gerald Kaufman, Labour’s veteran backbencher, stayed true to his form of past decades by asking a long-winded question in which he laid the blame for the current violence directly at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s door.
Of greater concern was the Father of the House’s suggestion that the attacks on Israelis were a “direct consequence” of “persistent desecration of the Al Aqsa mosque by Israeli settlers”.
For the Tories, Oliver Dowden led the way, followed by Peter Bone and Neil Parish on Palestinian incitement, and John Howell asking about the arson attack on Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus.
Veteran Israel advocate Louise Ellman raised a number of the same points from the opposite side of the chamber.
But the most striking aspect of the session was the performance of Middle East Minister Tobias Ellwood.
Last week he issued a statement on the violence in which his apparent desperation to appear balanced led him to refer to the knife-wielding terrorists as having carried out “protests”.
Today he gave a shaky showing, struggling to read out the balanced lines provided by his department. His work could be described as “robotic”, except an automated read-out would surely have sounded more confident and competent.
Compare that to Europe Minister David Lidington, who spoke at the despatch box without notes, in complete control of his brief.
It is abundantly clear where the Tories’ interests lie. Israel and the Palestinians will not be top of the agenda, even during a crisis as evident as the one witnessed in the past fortnight.