Lashing out one last time at Israel, 73-year-old Secretary of State John justified the U.S. abstaining Dec. 23 in the U.N. Security Council, voting to officially condemn Israeli settlement building in the so-called Palestinian territories. Kerry went over the deep-end excusing the inexcusable, knowing, since Sept. 11, Israel is the most trusted partner in the fight against global terror. Voting along with 14 Security Council members to punish Israel for settlement building, Kerry claimed he did it to help push the elusive Israeli-Palestinian peace forward. Kerry spent the better part of two years in 2014 hitting a brick wall trying to get a Mideast peace. Kerry and his boss President Barack Obama never admitted that the U.S. didn’t have a peace partner when the Palestinian people are split between Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the West Bank.
Hamas’s 53-yar-old Gaza ruler Ismail Haniyeh continues to stockpile rockets and build tunnels for his next war with Israel. Calling the shots with Mahmoud Abbas’s Ramallah-based West Bank government, Haniyeh and other Hamas offcials remain actively at war with Israel. Kerry knows, but pretends, Abbas cannot negotiate for the Hanniyeh’s some 1.6 million followers, the vast majority seek to destroy the Jewish State. “If the choice in one state, Israel can’t either be Jewish or democratic,” said Kerry. “ It cannot be both, and it won’t ever really be at peace,” making the same astonishing statements he made with Syria. Kerry said many times that there can be no peace in Syria unless Syrian President Bashar al-Assad steps down. Kerry exposes his deep prejudice saying “Jewish and democracy” can’t exist. Kerry’s misguided words prompted U.K. Prime Minster Theresa May to object.
Unless Kerry’s prepared to tell Ireland they can’t be “Irish and democratic,” he can’t ignore the hypocrisy of telling Israel they can’t be “Jewish and democratic.” Kerry knows that “Jewish” refers to Israel’s overriding ethnic identity, not an official state religion. “The government believes that negotiations will only succeed when they are conducted between the two parties, supported by the international community,” said May, rejecting Kerry’s claim that settlement-building is the only obstacle to peace. With Palestinians split between Hamas and the PLO, but largely controlled by Hamas, Israel has no peace partner with whom to negotiate. Hamas has made clear they seek nothing short of destroying Israel. Kerry can’t speak with any certainty about the limits of Abbas’s authority to negotiate peace with Israel. Some 60% of Gazans seek to topple the Israeli government.
May criticized Kerry for focusing on only one issue: Israeli settlement construction in the so-called Palestinian territories. Kerry doesn’t mention that before the 1967 Six Day War, Palestinians held not one inch of sovereign land. Attacked by Palestinians, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq June 5, 1967, Israel annexed Egypt’s Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, Jordan’s East Jerusalem and West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights. Years after the Six Day War, Palestinians claimed Israeli spoils as their own sovereign land. When Obama and Kerry told U.N. Amb. Samantha Power to abstain from voting Dec. 23 to pass the U.N. Resolution 2334 condemning Israel settlement construction in “occupied territories,” they knew the Palestinian territories are subject to negotiation in any two-state solution. Kerry justified the U.S. abstention as consistent with U.S. policy.
Past U.S. policy on a Mideast peace accepted U.N. Resolution 242—requiring Israel to swap land for peace, returning to the pre-1967 borders—now completely obsolete. Since Sept. 11, the U.S. and Israel battle global terrorism, requiring Israel to maintain its current borders. Kerry understands the seamless U.S.-Israeli military alliance, requiring Israel to maintain territory seized during the 1967 War for territorial integrity. With all the chaos in the Middle East caused by the Iraq War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is of minor consequence today. Obama never really understood U.S. national security in a post-Sept. 11 world. Voting against Israel in the Palestinian-prone Security Council proved that point. President-elect Donald Trump vowed that things would be different once he takes office. Kerry’s statements that Israel can’t be “Jewish and democratic” are outrageous.
Taking final shots at Israel and today Russia in the last days of the Obama administration shows the kind of sour grapes that hurts U.S. foreign policy. Whatever differences with Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it right that friends don’t take friends to the U.N. Security Council. Obama and Kerry could never admit that current Palestinian leadership has too close ties to terrorism, especially Hamas backing the Muslim Brotherhood insurgency in Egypt. Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi only wished Israel could return to controlling the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, now that both areas are infested with terrorists. El-Sisi spends every waking minute battling the Muslim Brotherhood seeking his assassination. U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May got it right that Israeli settlement-building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is only one small piece of the peace problem.
