Secretary of State John Kerry says he’s worried that Israel may evolve into a country that becomes “impossible to manage,” and that Israel’s failure to negotiate a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority would leave Israel a “fortress” under constant assault.
Kerry has pressed for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian Authority for some time, and used an interview with The New Yorker to prod Israel into accepting that answer. But the New Yorker story also cites officials who say Kerry is “exasperated” with Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for taking steps to thwart that result.
Among other things, Kerry is frustrated with issues ranging from “the injustice of settlement building in the West Bank to the way [Netanyahu] employs Yitzhak Molcho, his lawyer and confidant, to stifle even the most inconsequential negotiation.”
The story is filled with quotes from “American officials” who describe Netanyahu as “myopic, entitled, untrustworthy, routinely disrespectful toward the president, and focused solely on short-term political tactics to keep his right-wing constituency in line.”
This is not the first time members of the Obama administration have slammed the Israeli prime minister in the press. Last year, a senior Obama administration official called Netanyahu “a chickenshit” in an article in The Atlantic. Other officials had previously called the prime minister “recalcitrant, myopic, reactionary, obtuse, blustering, pompous, and ‘Aspergery,'” the article also revealed.
Kerry also questions whether or not the Israeli government actually wants to solve the conflict with the Palestinians or if it knows what kind of country it wants Israel to become.
“I understand the passions that are behind all of this — I get it,” Kerry said. “If it were easy, it would have been done a long time ago. I happen to believe there is a way forward. There’s a solution.”
“The alternative is you sit there and things just get worse,” Kerry added. “There will be more Hezbollah. There will be more rockets. And they’ll all be pointed in one direction. And there will be more people on the border.”
“And what happens then?” he asked. “You’re going to be one big fortress? I mean, that’s not a way to live.”
Kerry worries that this outcome could lead Israel to become a binational state, which would be “an impossible entity to manage,” and warned that if the Palestinian Authority were to break up, it could lead to even greater security challenges for the Jewish state.
“It seems to me it is far more intelligent and far more strategic, which is an important word here, to have a theory of how you are going to preserve the Jewish state and be a democracy and a beacon to the world that everybody envisioned when Israel was created,” he said.
And while he doesn’t believe Israel will disappear, he said it could evolve into an apartheid state.
“Will it be a democracy? Will it be a Jewish state? Or will it be a unitary state with two systems, or some draconian treatment of Palestinians, because to let them vote would be to dilute the Jewish state?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I have no answer to that. But the problem is, neither do they,” Kerry continued, referring to the Israeli government. “Neither do the people who are supposed to be providing answers to this. It is not an answer to simply continue to build in the West Bank and to destroy the homes of the other folks you’re trying to make peace with and pretend that that’s a solution.”
Some of Kerry’s exasperation with Netanyahu relates to Syria. The story said Netanyahu had a chance to help revive the peace process between in Syria and Israel, but balked.
Kerry, who was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at that time, said he had a letter that Syrian President Bashar Assad “wrote and signed proposing a structure by which he was willing to recognize Israel, have an embassy there, make peace, deal with the Golan, et cetera.”
But Netanyahu, the Kerry said, was unwilling to move forward: “Bibi came to Washington, and one of the first things out of his mouth in the Oval Office was ‘I can’t do this. I’m not going to — I just can’t.'”
