John Kerry’s visit to the Middle East this week may be his first as U.S. secretary of state, but it is just his latest foray into the region and the latest in a well-trodden path of American diplomats coming into the region and making promises about progress that produce no concrete action.

For some time now the focus of such missions and much of the research on the region has been an attempt to discover why the U.S. is so hated.

Of course, they have had the answer in front of them all along. Every extremist operation has taken place because of the injustice that has been meted out against the Palestinians.

Given how evident the reason is for their ill favor in the world, it would be an embarrassment and a joke if after two dozen years spent, and so many endeavors to discover it, the U.S. was still unaware.

Yet in its deeds and actions it acts as though it is oblivious to the reason behind discontent in the region, and its role in perpetuating it.

Either they have blinkers on, or perhaps take the people of the region for morons.

Now, U.S. forays into the region are necessarily focusing on more urgent issues. The country is preoccupied with the immediacy of events in Syria, of the situation in Iran, and its burgeoning relations with the post-Arab Spring countries.

A wild optimist might hope that the penny has finally dropped for the U.S., given Kerry’s unscheduled meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. But they certainly have not made the topic a priority.

If one looks back through the archives of the visits of every U.S. Secretary of State in the past 20 years, they would see a pattern of sugar-coated, ultimately empty pledges that result in no positive change.

As a result the people of the Middle East have given up hope that a solution to the region’s woes will come from the U.S. They are fed up with empty promises and endless visits to diagnose a problem that is as clear as day.

In reality every U.S. administration knows the solution, but fails to implement it because the Zionist lobby ultimately takes precedence.

It is therefore understandable that this part of the world reacts to Kerry’s visit with a healthy degree of skepticism. Until there is evidence of, at the very least, a shred of honesty about the U.S.’ dealings in the Middle East, then the situation is likely to remain that way.

Instead, the U.S. and Middle Eastern governments go through a charade of discovery and progress with each visit, while the reality over the past 30 years has been decline in the region. It is only to be expected that their intended audiences will become sick and tire of words that promise advancement and deliver the opposite, with no light at the end of the tunnel.