Israel-Palestine: John Kerry's 4 Mistakes

By sitting on the fence between Israelis and Palestinians, who have descended into a new crisis that could deal a fatal blow to the negotiations that were restarted in July, John Kerry is doing a disservice to the Middle East peace cause. In this affair, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have kept to their lines. The one who failed on his mission is the American secretary of state himself. Here are four reasons why.

The settlements are at full speed. In 2013, the number of dwellings built in West Bank settlements increased by 123 percent as compared to 2012, while inside Israel, this figure did not cross the 4 percent mark for the same time period. The main reason behind the current turbulence lies in these two figures from the department of statistics on Israel. Kerry did not know how to stop or even slow down the settlements steamroller. This allows for two dramatic consequences: It de facto sabotages the two-state solution with the boundaries of 1967, which is the most realistic way of settling the conflict, and it perpetuates the impunity that feeds the Israeli system of occupation. Since July, Israeli security forces have killed 56 Palestinians, 146 houses have been destroyed, and 550 attacks by settlers have been documented. Over the same time period, five Israelis were killed.

The Europeans are sitting on the sidelines. Lacking preparedness to make up for the imbalance in any negotiation between an occupier and the occupied, Kerry could have entrusted the task to the Europeans. As talks resume, Brussels announcing new directives that exclude the Jewish settlements from cooperative community programs would foresee a new distribution of roles: Europe gets the stick, and the U.S. becomes the carrot. But Kerry quickly gave in to Washington’s maddening obsession with conducting the peace proceedings in close confidence with Israel.

Symbolizing this regression is the return of Martin Indyk, an old member of AIPAC, the pro-Likud lobby, as special envoy for the Middle East. He had already been in this post during the disastrous Oslo proceedings. The European chancelleries could have shown some initiative by increasing their criticism of settlement product labels, but the 28 are reluctant to push Israel around.

International law has been eclipsed. In a context that is also not very favorable, the Palestinians hang on to international law. If they accepted that the negotiations are not about a finished peace plan, which Israel thinks would be premature, but a simple framework agreement, they were hoping for the inclusion of references to the historical terms of the peace proceedings, notably the geographical boundaries of 1967 that became part of Resolution 242 of the U.N.

But rather than focusing on this body of work, the unrivaled bedrock of any peace agreement, Kerry has allowed himself to get stuck in a fruitless discussion with Netanyahu on two issues that are not acceptable to the Palestinians: Israel’s recognition as a Jewish state and the continued presence of Israeli troops in the Jordan valley. It was just in mid-March that the secretary of state dared to declare that the polarization of the debate on the Jewish state question was a “mistake.” Too late.

Before he revives the negotiations, have his advisers shown him the famous 2001 amateur video available on the Internet, where Netanyahu, who was filmed without his knowledge, brags about having derailed the Oslo proceedings to a family of settlers? In front of his audience, which is concerned about the reaction of the Western powers, he brazenly explains, “I know the United States. We can easily sway it in the right direction.”

As in chess, there is neither a deadline nor a consequence. Kerry could have tried to get around Bibi’s delay tactics by altogether refusing to prolong the proceedings or letting it be known that the obstructionist party could face consequences. He could have made it known that in the event of Israeli obstruction, the U.S. would no longer be opposed to the Palestinian Authority joining the offices of the U.N. through its continued recognition, granted in 2012, as a U.N. nonmember state.

The idea would be to ensure that the Palestinians are no longer the only losers, should the talks fall through. But as per the mantra of the former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who said, “There are no sacred dates,” the April 29 deadline is not one either. On that date, either the dialogue will have resumed without any further chances for a breakthrough, or it will be certifiably over without any consequence having been wielded.

Therefore, Kerry has made all the mistakes of his predecessors to the T. And so, American diplomacy was unable to go beyond the Oslo paradigm — which was, however, fouled up from the inside. “When you are serious about peace, call us,” one of his predecessors, James Baker, who was exasperated with Israeli resistance, said. That was in 1990. How much longer can the Palestinians wait until Netanyahu picks up his telephone?