When a US presidential candidate arrives in town, there is only one question on every Israeli's mind: how good a friend to Israel will this man be? Eager to answer this question, Barack Obama said: "Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel's." That much is of course beyond dispute - his aides said he had intended to say the United States.
The bungled statement was an early sign of his nerves on a trip where every phrase he utters will be linguistically x-rayed for incipient signs of bias. Mr Obama had every right to be nervous.
Just yards from the King David hotel where Mr Obama was due to stay, a Palestinian driver of a bulldozer went on the rampage injuring 16 Israeli civilians, one seriously, before being shot dead by a civilian and a policeman. It was the second time in three weeks that an attack had been launched by Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem with a blue identity card, which gives the holder virtually all the rights of an Israeli citizen except the right to vote.
The attack sparked a fresh debate about the rising involvement of the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem in attacks, an arena regarded as the soft underbelly of Israel's network of walls and barriers sealing off the West Bank, because East Jerusalem is regarded by Israel as annexed territory.
The latest bulldozer attack sparked calls for the resumption of "punitive acts" and the razing the homes of men involved in the attacks, even though the last time this form of collective punishment was used, it had no discernible deterrent effect. During the second intifada, the Israeli military demolished 270 houses, but stopped doing so after a defence committee said its deterrent effect had not been established.
Mr Obama was quickly asked to tick this box. "It's just one more reminder why we have to work diligently, urgently and in a unified way to defeat terrorism," Mr Obama said. "There are no excuses." He ticked another Israeli box for good measure. He said there was sufficient evidence that the Syrians were developing a nuclear reactor on the site that Israelis jets demolished last year.
Mr Obama's schedule of meetings today also speaks volumes about the straitjacket of policy positions he has slipped into for the duration of this visit. After breakfast with the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, who has burnished his hawkish credentials as a tough and unyielding defence minister, Mr Obama went on to meet another strong contender for the premiership - the Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.
After that, the now compulsory visit to Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, followed by a meeting with the Israeli president, Shimon Peres. The afternoon beckons with a helicopter tour of the "seam" between Israel and the West Bank, which ends in Sderot, the southern immigrant town that has born the brunt of rocket fire from Gaza.
In between these two sections of Mr Obama's itinerary, he meets the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in his office in the Muqata in Ramallah. In other words, of the 36 hours Mr Obama has devoted to this visit, he will spend around 45 minutes talking to Palestinian spokesmen. This is one measure of Mr Obama's concern to court Israeli opinion.
But it is at least better than his Republican rival John McCain achieved on his last visit here, where he only managed to telephone Mr Abbas. And there is no question of Mr Obama crossing into Gaza, a land officially designated by Israel as a hostile entity. It will be in Sderot, not Gaza City that Mr Obama will give his first and only press conference of the day.
Before Mr Obama's arrival, there was another incident that offered a brief glimpse of the cauldron of passion and bitterness bubbling just below the surface of what constitutes everyday life here. An Israeli soldier was secretly filmed firing a rubber bullet at a Palestinian man who had been detained, blindfolded and handcuffed after a demonstration against the West Bank barrier. The soldier was less than two metres away from the Palestinian detainee and aimed at his foot. Happily the soldier missed, crazing the victim's big toe. A military investigation has been launched. Mr Obama has yet to comment about that.