John Kerry, the Man for Hopeless Issues

A merchant of unsellable deals — that is what I called John Kerry a few months ago. And considering his perseverance, every merchant can eat his heart out. Wednesday, I read in The London Times that in the past 169 days, he covered 371,000 miles to bring peace to Israel and a state to the Palestinians — tirelessly from airplane stairs to airplane stairs. As he could have known from the beginning, it was all for nothing. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his ministers only want a Palestinian matter-of-form-state, but more than that, they prefer to preserve the current situation, while the Palestinians are too weak and too divided to offer meaningful resistance.

It was not about an agreement before April 29 anymore, as it was suppose to be, but instead, about a framework agreement for more negotiations, which essentially equates to hot air. The de facto death of an incurable patient came when on the agreed date, Israel neglected to release the last 30 out of 104 Palestinian prisoners. That release was an important condition for the Palestinians in order to give the peace project a chance.

Subsequently, the Palestinians started the accession procedures for 15 international treaties — notably human rights and rules of war conventions — a so-called one-sided step that they promised to give up at the beginning of Kerry’s pilgrimage. Israel on its turn announced the construction of 708 dwellings in occupied East Jerusalem and demolished 32 Palestinian homes: in short, the usual chorus to improve the atmosphere during the negotiations.

It is interesting that, for example, The New York Times reported the Israeli point of view, which states that the angry Palestinians were the first to violate the agreement, followed by the cancellation of the release. A matter of somebody not paying a lot of attention, I will say kindly. Despite efforts by the Israeli ministers, who unanimously attempted to place blame on the Palestinians — you see, no peace partner! — it really was the other way around.

Even more remarkable in my opinion was Kerry’s plea for using the release of the Israeli super-spy Pollard after 30 years of imprisonment to change Israel’s attitude to a more compliant one. What will be the next bribe? An attack on Iran?

Theoretically, Kerry’s two-states-project has not died yet. Kerry is not calling it quits yet, although even he mentioned that his patience does not last forever. Neither Netanyahu nor Abbas flat out said no: No, we do not want to see you anymore Kerry, the door is closed, go find yourself another hopeless issue to solve. However, that is only the case because nobody wants to be branded as the side that does not want peace. As far as they are concerned, it is only a matter of sitting Kerry’s project out until it automatically expires at the end of this month.

But reader beware! What if Kerry somehow finds a way to keep things going? Under the current political circumstances, productive negotiations are NOT possible.