John Kerry has good reason, in his final days as US Secretary of State, to reiterate the case for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s a worthy goal.
But in doing so in a “rueful valedictory” he has been disingenuous in seeking to heap virtually all the blame on Israeli settlements rather than Palestinian intransigence for the abysmal failure of the Obama administration to make headway in peace negotiations.
He has used the same misleading argument US ambassador Samantha Powell did in the UN Security Council last week when she withdrew Washington’s steadfast, decades-long diplomatic protection from Israel, declining to use the US veto to block a resolution that has now established Jewish settlements as “a flagrant violation of international law”, a move likely to gravely damage Israel.
Settlements are certainly an issue. But they are not the main obstacle to peace. The real impediment is the unwillingness of Palestinian leaders across the board to accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state alongside their own. Any US secretary of state who seriously wanted to resolve the conflict should have started from that premise, leaving the Palestinians in no doubt they will never achieve statehood as long as their primary goal is the destruction of Israel.
Read the full editorial at The Australian.