Secretary of State John Kerry accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of presiding over the most “right wing” coalition is Israeli history, leading to policies that would destroy the two-state coalition the United States supports.
“The Israeli prime minister publicly supports a two-state solution, but his current coalition is the most right wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements,” Kerry said. “The result is that policies of this government, which the prime minister himself just described as more committed to settlements than any in Israel’s history, are leading in the opposite direction. They’re leading towards one state.”
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Kerry pointedly noted, opposes a two-state solution, as do other members of the governing coalition.
The State Department has condemned the ongoing construction of the settlements in increasingly harsh terms, but the rebukes did not produce a change in Israeli policy. Kerry suggested that Netanyahu had been presumptuous in his approach toward the United States.
“My job above all else [is] to defend the United States of America — to stand up for and defend our values and our interests in the world, and if we were to stand idly by, and know that, in doing so, we are allowing a dangerous dynamic to take hold which promises greater conflict and instability too a region in which we have vital interests we would be derelict in our own responsibilities,” Kerry said. “Regrettably, some seem to believe that the U.S. friendship means that the U.S. must accept any policy regardless of our own interests … even after urging again and again that the policy must change.”
Kerry appeared to mock a statement by Netanyahu, made to Kerry, that “friends don’t take friends” to the Security Council.
“Friends need to tell each other the hard truths and friendships require mutual respect,” Kerry said at the outset of his speech in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Netanyahu’s “friends” statement was part of a barrage of criticism from Israeli officials, as the antipathy between the Netanyahu and Obama administration’s broke into the open. Israeli officials accused the Obama team of choosing to “collude” with their enemies. “It was to be expected that Israel’s greatest ally would act in accordance with the values that we share and that they would have vetoed this disgraceful resolution,” Danny Danon, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, said following the U.N. vote.
Kerry rejected that claim, saying that Israel provoked U.N. action by repeatedly building settlements in disputed Palestinian territory. The outgoing secretary of state criticized Palestinian leaders for condoning terrorism, but he argued that the hope of a two-state solution is being strangled by the Israeli government.
