In riposte to Kerry, Netanyahu blames Palestinians for talks stalemate

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas for stalled peace talks Tuesday, citing a recent poll that he said showed wide support on the Palestinian street for terror attacks and against a two-state solution.

Netanyahu, speaking with Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon during a tour of the Israeli army’s Southern Command headquarters, called on the international community to recognize that Ramallah was to blame for the impasse in negotiations.

He spoke a day after the publication of a New Yorker profile of US Secretary of State John Kerry, in which Kerry said Israel was failing under Netanyahu to work toward resolving the Palestinian conflict: “It is not an answer to simply continue to build in the West Bank and to destroy the homes of the other folks you’re trying to make peace with and pretend that that’s a solution,” Kerry said.

“The time has come for the international community to understand that the reason there is no negotiation and no progress toward peace is not Israel’s fault but that of the Palestinian side,” a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office quoted Netanyahu as saying Tuesday.

The premier said “some 75% of the Palestinians reject the two-state solution and about 80% support continuing stabbing attacks,” apparently referencing a survey published Monday.

Netanyahu didn’t specify where he got his numbers from, but they were likely based on a survey of Palestinian public opinion published a day earlier.

The poll published Monday by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed 67% of Palestinians supported knife attacks against Israelis.

When asked about attacks against Israeli soldiers, the number rose to 79%.

The poll found some 45% of Palestinians still support the two-state solution.

Abbas “continues to incite with false propaganda on Al-Aqsa Mosque, false propaganda on executions, and continues to push off any real attempt to conduct dialogue,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office read.

Abbas on Monday spoke of “justified popular unrest,” in an apparent reference to the ongoing surge of terror attacks on Israelis, and said young Palestinian protesters were “driven by despair over the lack of a two-state solution.”

On Tuesday morning, Ya’alon commented on Abbas’s remarks in an interview on Army Radio. Asked about the Palestinian Authority president’s remarks that the new Palestinian generation “has no hope,” Ya’alon said he didn’t “know what hope he is talking about.”

“If it’s the hope of a peaceful life based on compromise, then we tried this with him already. He is the one who refused, including a year ago, when we negotiated for nine months. If it’s the hope that Israel will disappear because he does not recognize it as the nation-state of the Jewish people, then it is good that they’re hopeless.”

AFP contributed to this report.