We were dismayed by some of Secretary of State Kerry’s remarks at the Saban Forum in Washington, particularly his warning to Israel about the dire consequences should the current state of confrontation with the Palestinians continue.
Plainly, as can be seen from the quote below, the unstated context was that Palestinians will soon overtake Jews in terms of population. Did Mr. Kerry think that publicly advancing this line of argument would inspire a greater Palestinian commitment to earnest negotiations or lead the Palestinians’ amen corner at the UN to treat Israel as anything other than a pariah in international affairs?
While Mr. Kerry was critical of Palestinian leaders for their incitement of the current wave of deadly attacks against Israelis, he excoriated Israel for its settlement policy and spoke of the “frustration” of the Palestinians over not seeing any change in their lives:
The status quo is simply not sustainable and the fact of the matter is that current trends, including violence, settlement activity, demolitions, are imperiling the viability of a two-state solution…. And that trend has to be reversed to prevent this untenable one-state reality from taking hold…. Settlements are absolutely no excuse for violence – and we are clear about that…. [At the same time] continued settlement growth raises honest questions about Israel’s long-term intentions and will only make separating from the Palestinians much more difficult….
I can’t stress enough that the terror attacks are devastating the hopes of Israelis who want to believe peace is possible and violence must stop, but Palestinian hopes are also being dashed by what they see every day. They’re focused on a reality that few others see – that the transition to greater Palestinian civil authority contemplated by the Oslo process has in many ways been reversed.
Mr. Kerry’s remarks were actually something of an improvement over some of his previous public statements, as he doubtless sought to avoid the criticism provoked by his October 13 Harvard speech when he suggested Palestinian violence was somehow understandable: “There’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years, and there’s an increase in the violence because there’s this frustration that’s growing.”
And he also caught flack a month later for comments about the Paris terrorist attacks that left hundreds dead and wounded; Mr. Kerry seemed to suggest there had been some “rationale” for the Charlie Hebdo killings last January:
There’s something different about what happened from Charlie Hebdo, and I think everybody would feel that…. There was a sort of a particularized focus and perhaps a legitimacy in terms of – not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, OK, they’re really angry because of this and that….
This Friday [i.e. the Paris attacks] was absolutely indiscriminate. It wasn’t to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people.
We thank the secretary for clearing things up for us. Maybe terrorists sometimes do have a point. On second thought, maybe public speaking is not his forte and he should try to avoid it.