Kerry warns: Two-state solution ‘in jeopardy’

WASHINGTON: Secretary of State John Kerry tore into Israel on Wednesday for settlement-building, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of dragging Israel away from democracy and forcefully rejecting the notion that America had abandoned Israel with a controversial UN vote.
Israel’s government accused Kerry of a skewed attempt to blame Israel for failing to reach a peace deal.
In a farewell speech, Kerry laid out a vision for peace that he won’t be in office to implement, but that the US hoped might be heeded even after President Barack Obama leaves office.
He staunchly defended Obama’s move last week to allow the UN Security Council to declare Israeli settlements illegal, the spark that set off an extraordinary and deepening diplomatic spat between the US and its closest Mideast ally.
“If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic, it cannot be both, and it won’t ever really be at peace,” Kerry said in a speech that ran more than an hour, a comprehensive airing of grievances that have built up in the Obama administration over eight years but were rarely, until this month, discussed publicly.
Breaking sharply from longstanding US policy that foreign powers shouldn’t impose a solution, Kerry unveiled a six-part outline of what a future peace deal could look like. The outline tracked closely with principles long assumed to be part of an eventual deal, and Kerry insisted he was merely describing what’s emerged as points of general agreement.
Pushing back on Israel’s fury at the US abstention in the United Nations vote, Kerry questioned Netanyahu’s commitment to Palestinian statehood, which has formed the basis for all serious peace talks for years. Though Netanyahu says he believes in the two-state solution, Kerry said, the government he leads is “the most right-wing in Israel’s history.”
“The settler agenda is defining the future of Israel. And their stated purpose is clear: They believe in one state,” Kerry said.
While Israel’s Arab population has citizenship rights, the roughly 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank do not. Israel controls their ability to move, they can be subject to Israeli military law and they do not have a right to vote in Israeli elections. Instead, they are governed by the Palestinian Authority, which has only limited powers of autonomy.
Netanyahu called the speech a “great disappointment” at a time when the region is “going up in flames.”
Speaking in Hebrew, Netanyahu said: “For a full hour, the secretary of state attacked the only democracy in the Middle East.”
Earlier, Netanyahu’s office issued a statement denouncing the speech, arguing it was “skewed against Israel.”
“Kerry obsessively dealt with settlements and barely touched upon the root of the conflict: Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries,” the prime minister’s office said.
Kerry said a future deal would have to ensure secure borders for Israel and a Palestinian state formed in territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war, with “mutually agreed equivalent swaps.”
He said both countries must fully recognize each other, ensure access to religious sites and relinquish all other existing claims. Kerry also called for assistance to help Palestinian refugees.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he is ready to resume talks “within a specific time frame and on the basis of international law.” He said that would include a reference to the UN Security Council resolution passed last week.