Soon-not-to-be US Secretary of State John Kerry has once again shown why it is a great thing he is soon-not-to-be.
US Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday accused right-wing Israelis of deliberately thwarting efforts to broker a peace deal with the Palestinians.
In unusually stark terms, Washington’s top diplomat warned that Israeli settlement building was undermining any hope of an agreement to allow two states to live side-by-side.
At the Saban Forum, an annual gathering of senior Israeli and US policymakers, Kerry said some members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had made “profoundly disturbing” statements.
“And more than 50 percent of the ministers in the current government have publicly stated they are opposed to a Palestinian state and that there will be no Palestinian state,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Netanyahu had addressed the forum via video link, arguing that Israeli settlement building was not an obstacle to peace.
Israel was ready for talks with no preconditions, he said, urging Arab governments to recognize the state of Israel.
However, Kerry dismissed the idea that more Arab states would strike peace deals with Israel without any moves towards an agreement with the Palestinians.
“There will be no advance and separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace,” he said. “Everybody needs to understand that. That is a hard reality.”
In the US government’s view, Israel’s accelerated building on Palestinian-owned land is not only an obstacle to peace but deliberately so, Kerry added.
“I’m not here to tell you that the settlements are the reason for the conflict, no, they’re not,” Kerry said.
“But I also can not accept the notion that they don’t affect the peace process, that they aren’t a barrier to the capacity to have peace,” he argued.
“And I’ll tell you why I know that: because the left in Israel is telling everybody they are a barrier to peace and the right that supports it openly supports it because they don’t want peace.”
US President Barack Obama’s administration, which comes to an end next month with no prospect of a revived peace process, has been frustrated by the attitude of Netanyahu’s government.
You can see Lurch in action here. Note how he breezes past the palestinian’s responsibilities “some of which they have not fulfulled.” He mentions incitement but no word on the terrorism to which we have been subjected. He explains his focus on Israel because it is a “US-Israeli forum,” and thus wants to talk about what the US and Israel can do. I would have thought talking about ways to end the incitement and terrorism are relevant points for discussion.
He is also wrong. To paint all those who support a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria as not wanting peace and aiming to Greater Israel is a libel, and indicates a fundamental (and worrying) misunderstanding of the situation here.
In the meantime, the palestinians – whether the PA or Hamas – do not want peace and want all of the land here as part of a palestinian state. This is borne out time and again by their own statements and actions. Yet John Kerry does not see it fit to talk about that – or even believe this to be the case.
