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Secretary of State John Kerry has determined that ISIS is indeed committing genocide against Christians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria.
"In my judgment Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in territory under its control" Kerry said in a statment Thursday, using the Arabic acronym for the jihadist army.
"Daesh is genocidal by self-acclimation, by ideology and by practice," he added.
The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or IS, has slaughtered many Christians, Yazidis and other minorities since launching their jihad ("holy" war).
Also, Lane recently shared his thoughts on how labeling ISIS's attacks on religious minorities as "genocide" could affect the political year and beyond. Watch below:
In making his decision, Kerry weighed whether ISIS targeting of Christians and other minorities meets the definition of genocide.
Still, Kerry's announcement will not "obligate" the administration to take further action against ISIS terrorists.
The secretary explained that he was "neither judge nor prosecutor nor jury," and that any criminal charges must come from an independent international investigation.
Several groups had pushed for a declaration of genocide. And the House of Representatives voted this week 393 to nothing to condemn ISIS atrocities as genocide.
Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., applauded Kerry's announcement.
"The United States has now spoken with clarity and moral authority," he said.
"I sincerely hope that the genocide designation will raise international consciousness, end the scandal of silence, and create the preconditions for the protection and reintegration of these ancient faith communities into their ancestral homelands," he continued.
"Christians, Yazidis, and others remain an essential part of the Middle East's rich tapestry of religious and ethnic diversity," Fortenberry said.
Netanyahu rejects French ultimatum on Palestinian statehood
Jan. 31, 2016 Reuters
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Sunday for a more “sober” approach towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in dismissing a French peace initiative as only encouraging Palestinians to shun compromise.
The proposal on Friday by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius for an international peace conference was the latest sign of Western frustration over the absence of movement toward a two-state solution since the collapse of U.S.-brokered negotiations in 2014.
Fabius said that if the French plan did not break the deadlock, Paris would recognize a Palestinian state.
Such a step would raise concern in Israel that other European countries, also long opposed to its settlement-building in occupied territory, would follow suit.
In public remarks to his cabinet, Netanyahu did not explicitly reject the notion of an international conference – an aide said Israel would examine such a request once it was received – but he made clear that reported details of the plan made it a non-starter.
Netanyahu said a “threat” to recognize a Palestinian state if France’s peace efforts did not succeed, constituted “an incentive to the Palestinians to come along and not compromise”.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting at his office in Jerusalem May 10, 2015. REUTERS/Sebastian Scheiner
“I assess that there will be a sobering up regarding this matter,” Netanyahu added. “In any event, we will make effort so that there is a sobering up here, and our position is very clear: We are prepared to enter direct negotiation without preconditions and without dictated terms.”
On Saturday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed the French proposal, telling an African summit in Ethiopia that “the status quo cannot continue”.
But Washington responded with caution to the French move, saying it continued to prefer that Israel and the Palestinians reach an agreement on final-status issues through direct talks.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called Abbas and the two discussed the French initiative and “the tense political situation in the region,” WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency reported on Sunday.
While aware the initiative may struggle to get off the ground, French officials said Paris had a responsibility to act now in the face of Israeli settlement activity and the prospect of continued diplomatic inaction as the United States focuses on a presidential election in November.
And, the officials said, Netanyahu had gone a step too far in accusing U.N. Secretary of State Ban Ki-moon of giving a “tailwind to terrorism” by laying some of the blame for four months of stabbings and car rammings by Palestinians at Israel’s door. Ban angered Israel by saying last week that it is “human nature to react to occupation”.
The United States, European Union – Israel’s closest allies – have also issued unusually stern criticism of Israel in recent weeks, reflecting their own frustration with the policies of Netanyahu’s right-wing government.
The criticism, particularly about the settlements, where some 550,000 Jews live in around 250 communities scattered across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, has raised Palestinian hopes that world powers might finally be minded to support a U.N. resolution condemning Israel’s policy outright.
WEST BANK ATTACK
Since October, Palestinian attacks, partly fueled by tensions over the freeze in peace talks, have killed 26 Israelis and a U.S. citizen.
In an incident on Sunday, a Palestinian gunman wounded three Israelis near the West Bank settlement of Beit El and was then shot dead by soldiers, the Israeli army said. Palestinian officials said he worked as a bodyguard for a Palestinian prosecutor in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Shortly after that attack, a Palestinian motorist was shot and wounded when he tried to run down soldiers at a military checkpoint in the West Bank, the army said.
Over the past four months, Israeli forces have killed at least 152 Palestinians, 98 of them assailants according to authorities. Most the others have died in violent protests.
“I don’t see anything that warrants living as long as the occupation smothers us and kills our brothers and sisters … You were first and I am following you,” the Beit El assailant, Amjad Abu Omar, wrote on Facebook.
Palestinians seek a state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, parts of which have been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East war. Palestine has non-member observer status at the United Nations and its flag flies with those of member states at UN headquarters in New York.
Sweden became the first EU member nation to recognize the Palestinian state in 2014. A total of 136 U.N.-member countries, mostly in Africa, Latin America and Asia, now do so.
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(Virginia Beach, Virginia) -- President Barack Obama's decision to pass on meeting Jordan's King Abdullah is a sign that the president doesn't understand the Middle East or how to fight radical Islam, author and Middle East expert Joel Rosenberg told CBN News.
Jordan is a key U.S. ally in the Middle East and the fight against the Islamic State. Abdullah is in Washington this week, but Obama, who will give his final State of the Union Address tonight, has declined to meet with him citing "scheduling conflicts," according to a report by The Times of Israel.
"He had time for Matt Lauer this morning on the 'Today Show.' You know, I mean, carve out 15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour with our main ally in the most dangerous fight that we are in right now," he continued. "This just goes to the heart of it, if you understand Islam, if you understand the Middle East, then meet with your allies."
A White House official said the two leaders will meet "in the near future," according to The Times report.
Abdullah met with Vice President Joe Biden Tuesday and Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter on Monday.
The Times reports Abdullah and Kerry held talks about defeating the Islamic State and reviving peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. That discussion included conversations about the Temple Mount and ongoing disputes between parties on both sides.
A Pentagon spokesman said Carter told Abdullah he deeply appreciates Jordan's help in countering the Islamic State.
The Islamic State has conquered large parts of Iraq and Syria and proclaimed itself a caliphate. The radical Islamic army has attacked and killed religious minorities and turned women into sex slaves.
Joe Biden speaks in Washington, DC, on October 30, 2015. (Larry French/Getty Images for ANOC/AFP)
Biden says ‘no tolerance’ for comments from PM’s media czar pick
Speaking to US Reform Jews, vice president highest level official to take aim at Ran Baratz, but also stresses support for Israel and against incitement
WASHINGTON — While defending the strength of US-Israel ties as a relationship that can overcome policy disagreements, Vice President Joe Biden lashed out Saturday night against what he called “terrible comments” made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s media czar appointee Ran Baratz.
Addressing the Union for Reform Judaism’s biennial conference, Biden told the audience during his keynote speech that “there is no excuse, there should be no tolerance for any member or employee of the Israeli administration referring to the president of the United States in derogatory terms. Period. Period. Period. There is no justification for an official Israeli voice degrading the secretary of state, who has worked so hard, so long for the security of Israel.”
His statement was greeted by applause from the thousands-strong audience, as he continued to condemn similar insulting statements directed toward Secretary of State John Kerry.
Although Biden did not mention Baratz by name, the recent Netanyahu appointee was the unquestionable target of the vice president’s ire. Baratz’s appointment earlier this week made international headlines when it was revealed that he had made derogatory comments on social media about President Reuven Rivlin and Kerry, and accused Obama of anti-Semitism.
Three government ministers have already called publicly for Baratz’s nomination as head of media for the Prime Minister’s Office to be rescinded, but on Friday, Netanyahu denied reports that he was reconsidering the appointment of Baratz, who runs a right-leaning news site.
With Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama only two days away, Biden has become the highest-ranking US official to respond to Baratz’s comments.
Earlier statements were confined to official spokespeople.
On Thursday, State Department Spokesman John Kirby called the comments “troubling and offensive.”
“We obviously expect government officials from any country, especially our closest allies, to speak respectfully and truthfully about senior US government official,” he said. “It’s a rule you learn in kindergarten about name-calling and it’s simply not a polite thing to do.”
In recent weeks, US and Israeli officials had sought to calm already fraught waters in advance of Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, where he is expected to advocate for increased defense support from the US.
During his Saturday evening speech, Biden largely seemed to adhere to the positive relations message. “Notwithstanding even those terrible comments, no one can undermine our relationship or our commitment to the security and future of the Jewish and democratic State of Israel,” he said.
Biden acknowledged repeatedly during his speech that Israeli and American leaders had maintained working relations despite substantive disagreements.
“I’ve [had] my share of differences with Israeli leaders,” Biden recounted. “I’ve never thought, from [former prime minister] Menachem Begin on, that the settlement policy made any sense,” he said. ‘Despicable incitement’
Describing America’s commitment to Israel’s security as “rock-solid and unshakeable,” Biden also expressed concern at the continuing violence plaguing Israel and the West Bank.
“We have strongly condemned Palestinian acts of terror against Israel,” he said, highlighting what he described as “inflammatory rhetoric” that spurs on “random acts of violence.”
Such incitement, Biden said, “is despicable and dangerous for the entire region.” At the same time, however, Biden emphasized that “both sides need to demonstrate restraint and avoid incitement.”
“We don’t want another intifada or to risk violence escalating any further,” he added. “These sad events are a reminder that we need to work toward a lasting peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people.”
Insisting on the viability and necessity of the two-state solution, Biden also singled out for criticism those who would “delegitimize Israel.”
“The efforts to delegitimize Israel are anti-Semitism, plain and simple, and we will not hesitate to call it out,” Biden insisted.
Addressing the controversial nuclear deal with Iran, Biden said he and Obama were committed to stopping Iran from getting a bomb, and thanked the audience for “not bowing to the pressure to condemn [the deal] right out of the gate.”
The vice president thanked the “many…who had the courage to step out and support it” but also said that he “respected” those who chose not to support it after reviewing the facts.
“The core of our alliance is as solid as steel. No one president or prime minister can alter that no matter what they do,” Biden stressed earlier in the speech, emphasizing what he described as “our unwavering commitment to be the guarantor of Israel’s security.”
“No one has done more for Israel’s security than the Obama-Biden administration,” he continued. “We have had our disagreements, but we have taken our security cooperation to use Bibi’s – Mr. Netanyahu’s – words, unprecedented levels.”
The president has made it clear since the conflict in Gaza began heating up a few weeks ago, that his support of Israel begins and ends at the podium, as his actions outside of his famously scripted and egocentric speeches demonstrates a hidden hostility toward the Israelis.
President Obama warned Israeli leaders to use “restraint” in dealing with terrorists who were bombing their country, doing untold amounts of damage and putting people’s lives in danger.
"President Barack Obama stepped up his efforts Sunday to limit Israel’s gradual destruction of Hamas’ tunnel network in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza, which now conceals many of the rockets and jihadi units that attack Israelis.
In a morning call to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama “reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself [but] also raised serious concern about the growing number of casualties, including increasing Palestinian civilian deaths in Gaza and the loss of Israeli soldiers,” said a 2.00 p.m. statement from the White House.
Israel’s government did not officially respond to Obama’s statement, which came after Israel ground units moved into Gaza to find the tunnels. The Gaza area is controlled by Hamas green-waving jihadis, whose mission is to destroy Israel because it is not controlled by Muslims.
The warring parties should comply with the 2012 ceasefire signed by Hamas, Israel and Egypt’s government, said the White House statement.
“Secretary of State John Kerry will soon travel to Cairo to seek an immediate cessation of hostilities based on a return to the November 2012 ceasefire agreement,” the statement said.
Something that President Obama just doesn’t seem to understand about dealing with bullies like Hamas is that they don’t care about peace. These individuals are terrorists bent on the complete destruction of an entire race of people, along with dominating the world and ruling it under the flag of Islam.
Terrorists don’t do negotiations. They only understand power and force, meaning that Israel’s actions are an appropriate response to these vicious radicals. America should be doing as much as possible to support Israel and give them the breathing room they need to take out Hamas. In all honesty, they would be doing the world a favor.
Please share this article on Facebook and Twitter if you support Israel and their ground operations to eradicate Hamas and protect their country.
Do John Kerry (r) and Barack Obama really believe they're striving for peace? Or, are they inciting violence? (Reutes file photo )
Is Kerry Offering Excuses for Palestinian Terrorists and Blaming Jewish Victims?
Recent remarks by Secretary of State John Kerry give new meaning to the term "Foggy Bottom," a name synonymous with the location of the U.S. State Department. One might say these remarks represent seeing the peace process through foggy glasses, and a new low, or "bottom," of U.S. policy vis-a-vis Israel.
I was shocked to see the plethora of news reports and op-eds in the Jerusalem Post on Friday, October 16. The number of articles and column inches highlighting and bashing Kerry's comments was unprecedented to the best of my recollection about any one subject in one day's newspaper.
The Post's lead editorial, "Kerry and Free Will," led the barrage by quoting Kerry's incendiary remarks, "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."
The editorial continued, "According to Kerry, the building of houses in Judea and Samaria inexorably leads human beings with full control of their cognitive abilities to take to the streets of Jerusalem and Ra'anana and Itamar to hack people to death. If you ask Kerry, humans, or at least Palestinians, simply react (and) are conditioned by factors considered by Kerry to be beyond their control.
"But wait a minute. Could it be that Kerry is missing something in his analysis? Perhaps Palestinians are not simply captives to external stimuli. Perhaps they have control over their actions, just like you and me. Yet they choose time and again—tragically and violently—to embrace an ideology of victimhood and death worship that views the spilling of Jewish blood as a holy duty and self-destruction in pursuit of this goal as the highest form of martyrdom."
Columnist Caroline Glick's "Kerry, Israeli Arabs and the separation delusion" challenged Kerry's statement on the facts, and noted, "Kerry and his spokesmen have alleged that the current Palestinian convulsion of murderous violence is a product of 'a massive increase in settlements.' Yet as Haaretz (Israel's left wing, pro-Arab daily) reported, Israel has built fewer homes for Jews in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria since 2009 ... than it had since 1995."
Another columnist, David Weinberg, penned "Kerry, Stay Home" regarding the possibility that he was planning a trip to Israel. In the end, he is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Netanyahu in Germany. He wrote, "Kerry and his boss, U.S. President Barack Obama, are responsible for shaping the broader inflammatory context that has spawned the current wave of Palestinian terrorism against Israel. He and Obama are guilty of encouraging Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in the latter's escalating campaign of brazen lies, violent confrontations and diplomatic assault against Israel.
"Kerry has been utterly silent. He has had no comment of any of these Palestinian outrages. When Prime Minister Netanyahu raised concerns about low Jewish and high Arab voter turnout on Israeli election days Obama and Kerry went bananas. They quickly and loudly blasted him (Netanyahu) as a racist. This shows the prejudicial way in which Obama and Kerry approach the Israeli-Palestinian arena."
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach wrote in "Kerry's Broken Moral Compass," that "Kerry's comments about the recent wave of terrorist attacks ... Are contemptable. This is an astonishing justification for cold-blooded murder of Israeli men, women and children. Kerry is offering excuses for the terrorists and blaming the victims with (his) malignant words. This isn't the first time he has made such outrageous comments with regards to Israel and his reasoning and logic reveal how broken his moral compass has become.
"Kerry has again expressed a disturbingly amoral perspective on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and where the blame belongs. Does he really think that settlements are the root cause of cold-blooded killers stabbing women and children? Or that building houses is what causes terrorists to drive their cars into groups of pedestrians, then exit the vehicle and begin hacking to death the injured as they struggle to crawl away?"
It gives me no pride to call out John Kerry like this. I don't mean to be seen as piling on, but his comments are so outrageous, so dangerous, they cannot be left alone. Sadly, it's hard to disagree with any of these remarks, and the twisted perspective they represent.
However, I have a different perspective, a more personal perspective, as to why Kerry is wrong. Recently we began some renovations at my house. We hired Omar, the Palestinian Arab contractor who supervised building my house a decade ago. Omar has always been friendly, professional, and reliable. He is quick to talk with pride and affection about his five kids. We are about the same age. I have six kids.
But having Palestinian Arabs in our home working with construction tools and my kids around is cause for some stress these days. I trust Omar but don't know his workers, so I hid our kitchen knives. Neighbors are quick to remind me not to be so trusting of Omar, or any of his workers. We live in troubled times.
But when Kerry blames construction in "settlements," it's the homes for Jewish families that he is finding offensive. But nine out of 10 times, they are built by Palestinian Arabs like Omar. Not only are these not an excuse for justifying the terrorism and violence that Kerry has done. The fact is that building our homes provides a point of civil interaction between Arabs and Jews that's not only not in conflict, but provides our Arab neighbors with a good living.
And that's not just the men actually working in our house, but the carpenters, building supply distributors, and others who make a good living. If this were to stop, so would their income.
Over the years, I have hosted diplomats from the American consulate in Jerusalem. Each year, there's someone else in charge of visiting, digesting data, and reporting on life on the ground in Israeli communities like mine, over the "green line." What they call "settlements." Its inefficient to me that by the time a young diplomat just begins to understand the situation, a new person is appointed to replace the old one, as if there were a one year expiration date stamped on their side like a box of breakfast cereal.
I have shared the same assessment with each one. It is the polar opposite from the view that Secretary Kerry has presented. Perhaps the memos from low-level U.S. diplomats with my opinions never made it to Washington. Perhaps they got misplaced. Perhaps this is a case of being in the fog and looking at the trees.
Either way, Kerry is wrong. Dead wrong. And expressing these views not only doesn't prevent death and violence, it encourages it.
Jonathan Feldsteinwas born and educated in the U.S. and immigrated to Israel in 2004. He is married and the father of six. Throughout his life and career, he has been blessed by the calling to fellowship with Christian supporters of Israel and shares experiences of living as an Orthodox Jew in Israel. He writes a regular column for charismanews.com's Standing With Israel. He can be reached at FirstPersonIsrael@gmail.com.
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Palestinian cartoonists frequently celebrate the stabbings with cartoons on social media. One shows a woman wearing the Muslim hijab stabbing a pig dripping blood with a star of David on its back.
Last week in an interview with CBN News, Israeli Infrastructure Minister Yuval Steinitz warned that some of the attacks in Israel look as if they came from the ISIS playbook.
Are Palestinian terrorists adopting ISIS's tactics? CBN News Terrorism Erick Stakelbeck addressed that and more on Newswatch, Oct. 19.
"The fact that they're waving knives, coming to people's necks, trying to cut them or behead them -- I'm confident that at least some of these terrorists were not just indoctrinated but inspired also from ISIS," Steinitz said.
Palestinian journalist Bassam Tawil confirms the suspicion in a powerful article for the Gatestone Institute.
"They (the Palestinian terrorists) are trying to replace Islamic State jihadis as the chief "butchers" of humans in the Middle East," Tawil wrote.
"How can our leaders in Ramallah accuse Jews of 'contaminating' the Al Aqsa Mosque with their 'filthy feet' at a time when our youths burn a religious site such as Joseph's Tomb?" Tawil asked.
"The attacks are an attempt to erase history so that Jews will not be able to claim any religious ties to the land. This is exactly what the Islamic State is doing in Syria and Iraq," he added.
ISIS confirmed its support for the Palestinian attacks with the release of a video on social media Monday. A masked spokesman praised the Palestinian attackers as "lone wolves who refuse to be subdued and spread fear among the sons of Zion."
The ISIS media campaign, unprecdented in scope, calls for Palestinians to continue the attacks on soldiers and civilians, using "every means at their disposal, including knives, vehicles, poison and explosives."
With this as a backdrop, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Thursday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Germany.
White House and State Department responses to the wave of violence have been tepid and laced with the usual moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinian leaders, who have in large measure sparked the violence as well as applauded it.
A more appropriate response would be to condemn without qualification the spread of terror throughout the Palestinian territories and the ISIS connection, including the incitement to violence and the celebration of it in the Palestinian media.
Democratic presidential candidates might also help by demanding a more robust response from their president.
Republicans in Congress could help by tracking the flow of hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars to the Palestinian Authority and forcing a public account of where our tax dollars are being spent.
Get with it, Washington, or your approval ratings will drop even further.
Based on his previous "successes," John Kerry's pending visit to Israel will either end up achieving nothing or actually increasing the violence. Since Kerry has discovered the reason why so many Palestinian hands are rocking so many knives, it is worth looking into it.
In his Harvard lecture this week, Kerry determined that "there’s an increase in the violence because there’s this frustration that’s growing." This frustration, he says, is caused by “a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years.”
I don't know the source for Kerry's information. A safe guess would be that he was given short headlines from radical left-wing Israeli sources that are manipulating statistics for their own gains.
According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, however, true to 2014, construction of new homes in Judea and Samaria increased by 3.1%, representing a 52.5% decrease from the previous year. Additionally, the 7% increase in the Jewish population in these areas actually supports the settlers' complaint of a de facto building freeze in Judea and Samaria.
Kerry's explanation is found to be baseless, but there are other popular explanations about the Palestinian frustration that causes them to knife Jews, including poor living conditions and unemployment.
But over the course of the past weeks, enough information has surfaced to demonstrate that this, too, is not the source of frustration. Pictures of the dead knife-wielding terrorists are proudly displayed in the spacious houses of their families or next to their expensive cars.
Nor can a lack of education opportunities be blamed, considering one of the would-be stabbers, Israa Abed, is a chemical engineering student at the prestigious Israel Institute of Technology, popularly known as the Technion.
Of course, there is the explanation that Palestinians are extremely frustrated because Israel refuses to give them a state. Even if it is true, and Israel is the one refusing a Palestinian state, statistics show that more than 60% of Palestinians reject the two-state solution and hope to regain control over what they call "historical Palestine," which includes the whole of Israel.
This, I propose, is the real source of Palestinian frustration. For more than a hundred years, they failed to regain control over "Palestine." In fact, they have achieved the opposite.
The pretense for the present "wave of terror," as it is called, is the rumor that Israel intends to harm the Al Aqsa Mosque. This well-crafted strategy to rock the hands that hold the knives has consistently proved to be an effective tool to rally Muslims for yet another attempt to free Palestine.
With all the frustrations Israelis feel about the lukewarm response of their government to the present Palestinian attacks, there should be little doubt that Israel simply can't afford to be defeated.
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Love For His People Editor's note: Killing, beating and stabbing innocent people isn't the way to "vent" your "frustrations." Lawlessness must be dealt with aggressively, to save your people.
Blindness will always seek to excuse the wrong doer. Only one more year of this one in that position. Steve Martin
US Secretary of State John Kerry at a Harvard sponsored event Tuesday, October 13, 2015. (Photo: US Department of State)
Kerry: Israeli Settlement Construction to Blame for Violent Palestinian “Frustration”
“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.” (Proverbs 18:2)
US Secretary of State John Kerry attributed on Tuesday evening the current wave of terror to strike Israel to Palestinian “frustration” over the “massive increase in settlements.”
Speaking at Harvard University, the secretary warned that “unless we get going, the two-state solution will be conceivably stolen from everybody.”
During a question-and-answer session following his talk, Kerry linked Israeli construction in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria as a reasonable excuse for Palestinian violence and terror.
“There’s been a massive increase in settlement over the course of the last years and there’s an increase in the violence because there’s this frustration that’s growing,” he said, adding that there is also a growing “frustration among Israelis who don’t see any end.”
“I look at that and I say if that did explode – and I pray and hope it won’t – and I think there’s options to prevent that, then we would inevitably be at some point engaged in working through those kinds of difficulties,” Kerry explained.
The US official expressed his confusion over why previous peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have failed, arguing that many people have a sense of how to permanently resolve the conflict.
“So better to find the ways to deal with it before that happens than later and I think what always perplexes me – we’ve been through Oslo, Wye Plantation, Madrid, countless negotiations. Most people I talk to have a pretty damn good sense of what has to be done.”
“It’s a question of making the judgments and having the courage to go there,” Kerry said, adding that “we have 16 months left in this administration and we’re going to stay engaged and try to work through these issues because there are options and there is a better other side to the current conflict we’re witnessing.”
The last US-backed peace talks collapsed in April 2014 following nine months of back-and-fourth negotiations. Kerry revealed he would be visiting Israel “soon” to push for a fresh round of talks to “see if we can’t move away from this precipice.”
On Tuesday, Israel was victim to an unprecedented surge in terror incidents across the country. Three Israelis were killed and over 20 injured. Kerry condemned the attacks earlier in the day, saying “this violence and any incitement to violence has got to stop.”
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/51148/kerry-blames-israeli-settlement-construction-for-violent-palestinian-frustration-jerusalem/#7EfQiEv5qWfyum8O.99
