US Secretary of State John Kerry employed unusually stark works to warn Israel that it is heading into a “one-state reality” in which it will be obliged to resume full administrative and military control over the Palestinian West Bank.
At the Saban Forum, a bi-annual conference run by the Brookings Institution, Kerry stated that Palestinian “President Abbas spoke more despairingly my friends, than I have ever heard him about the sense of hopelessness that the Palestinian people feel.”
In the event the Palestinian Authority (PA) breaks down, Israel’s army “could be forced to deploy tens of thousands of soldiers to the West Bank indefinitely to fill the void,” Kerry said.
“Are Israelis prepared for the consequences this would have for their children and grandchildren who serve in the (Israel Defense Forces)?”
Alluding to a the position lately adopted by the Palestinian activist left and the Israeli right, in which a Jewish-majority State-of Israel would annex the West Bank, Kerry said “the one-state solution is no solution at all for a secure, Jewish, democratic Israel living in peace, it is simply not a viable option.” He urged both sides to return to the negotiating table.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded no less sharply at the opening of his weekly Sunday cabinet meeting.
“Israel will not be a binational state,” he said, but “in order to have peace, the other side must decide it too wants peace.”
“Unfortunately, this is what we see: Primarily, the incitement in the Palestinian Authority continues. Then I see the chief Palestinian negotiator visiting the family of a terrorist who tried to murder Jews. Not only is he not condemning, he’s going to offer his condolences,” Netanyahu continued, referring to PA chief negotiator Saeb Erekat’s visit to the home of a Palestinian security officer who wounded an Israeli civilian and an IDF soldier in shooting on Thursday.