Tough talk from Kerry about Israeli-Palestinian peace impasse

Secretary of State John Kerry startled the political establishment and likely angered the Israelis when he told a group of world leaders at the Trilateral Commission last Friday that Israel risks becoming "an apartheid state" if there is no peaceful settlement that can lead to a two state solution.  

This, of course, is a reference to the horrible state of racial separation and cruelty in South Africa prior to 1994, when the first democratic elections were held and Nelson Mandela became president.   Does the term appropriately apply to the Israel-Palestine situation?   I have long felt so, as has Jimmy Carter.

Kerry used the 1998 Rome Statute definition of apartheid:  "[I]nhumane acts… committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”

Most people accept as a fact now that there must be a two-state solution;  otherwise either Palestinians will continue to be under the domination of Israel without an equal voice in governance or else they will become the majority and it will no longer be a Jewish state.

As former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barack once said:   "

“As long as in this territory west of the Jordan River there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic.   If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."

Nevertheless, many Israelis and their supporters are outraged at Kerry's use of the term.  In fact, Kerry was blunt about both sides, saying on the one hand that, if there is no peace deal, there are likely to be further terrorist attacks on Israel from the Palestinian side.   “People grow so frustrated with their lot in life that they begin to take other choices and go to dark places they’ve been before, which forces confrontation,” he said.

On the other hand, Kerry also said:  “There is a fundamental confrontation and it is over settlements. Fourteen thousand new settlement units announced since we began negotiations. It’s very difficult for any leader to deal under that cloud.”

Kerry's impatience showed in his concluding remark, that he was considering laying out a U.S. plan for peaceful settlemen and saying:  ‘Here it is, folks. This is what it looks like. Take it or leave it.”

Ralph