Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ripped Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech on Israeli-Palestinian relations Wednesday, criticizing the nation’s top diplomat for blaming Israel for the region’s problems.
“Like the resolution that John Kerry advanced at the UN (Security Council), John Kerry gave a skewed speech against Israel. For over an hour, Kerry dealt obsessively with the settlements and almost didn’t touch on the root of the conflict — the Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries,” a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office read.
In a speech later in the afternoon, Netanyahu said the American-Israeli alliance is born of common values and common government and will survive the current flap with the Obama administration. However, he feels Kerry insulted the entire country by only paying “lip service” to the Islamic terrorism that’s plagued the country since its inception.
“They are the realities the people of Israel have had to endure because of mistaken policies,” he said.
The Israeli prime minister ripped the UN resolution passed last week as declaring holy sites, such as the Western Wall, as being in Palestinian territory and encouraging sanctions against Israel. By refusing to veto that resolution and with Kerry’s speech today, the United States seems to be backing away from its traditional allies in the Middle East, he said.
Netanyahu said he’s looking forward to President-elect Trump taking office, hopefully bringing more positive relations between the two countries, and talking directly with the Palestinians. In its waning days, the Obama administration must keep any more harmful things from happening to Israel in the United Nations.
“The U.S., if it’s true to its word or if it’s now true to its word, should come out and say, ‘We will not allow any more resolutions to come from the Security Council’ … and stop this game of charades,” he said.
Netanyahu’s statement was one of several from Israelis that crticized Kerry’s speech.
A former Israeli ambassador to the United States says Secretary of State John Kerry showed “no leadership” in his speech on Israel-Palestine relations on Wednesday, while a Republican member of Congress called it “disastrous.”
Naftali Bennett, leader of Israel’s Jewish Home Party, said, “Secretary Kerry’s speech is not unlike the Obama administration’s policy. It’s divorced from reality but with good intentions. It’s left the Middle East in flames, genocide in Syria, Iraq falling apart, Iran on a path to a nuclear weapon and abandoning the only free democracy in the middle east, Israel. It’s wrong, it’s immoral, but we will prevail.”
Danny Ayalon, who served as Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2002 to 2005, said Kerry’s speech, while extensive, provided no new solutions and no real path forward for peace in the region.
“No leadership, trying more of the same, which has been a failure for the last 23 years,” Ayalon said on CNN Wednesday.
Kerry’s 70-minute address from Foggy Bottom on the state of Israeli-Palestinian relations was an often angry message from the administration to the Israeli government that settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem must stop. He said those settlements are making a two-state solution in the region untenable and peace is becoming less likely.
The United States did not veto a United Nations Security Council vote last week declaring the settlements illegal, which has caused an uproar among Israel supporters.
Ayalon said Kerry’s speech was spent outlining the crisis and past arguments for the two-state solution but “a peace will not come from outlining these points.”
He added that the speech never mentioned the nuclear deal with Iran, the source of so much strain between the United States and Israel in recent years.
“It was detached from the geopolitical environment of the region,” he said. “Something has happened in the region in the last six years. There was no mention of the deal with Iran, which jeopardizes the security of Israel.”
Other Republican leaders also slammed Kerry’s speech, with Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, saying he was playing the Jewish community for fools.
Brooks said the decision to abstain from the Security Council vote was one last shot at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the Obama administration on its way out the door.
“Their recent actions at the United Nations did nothing more than allow President Obama to take a parting shot at Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu, while at the same time creating new roadblocks to peace,” he said in a statement. “True peace in the region cannot be achieved by isolating Israel in the international community, but rather can only be achieved through direct negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.”
