Ex-US envoy: Kerry’s speech ‘something he had to get off his chest’
Dennis Ross says there’s ‘distance’ between views of US president, secretary on conflict; David Friedman’s appointment as envoy said to push Obama to diplomatic action
US Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech Wednesday upbraiding Israeli settlement activity and warning about the danger is poses to the two-state solution was “something the secretary of state just had to get off his chest,” former adviser to US President Barack Obama Dennis Ross said on Thursday.
While the former US envoy to the Middle East acknowledged in an interview with Army Radio that the timing of the speech was “puzzling,” Ross said Kerry “clearly has a deep passion for the issue” and the secretary of state “feels it needed to be said ” before leaving office next month.
During the interview, Ross argued that the address reflected “a certain degree of distance” between Kerry and Obama’s positions on the conflict, which is why the US president didn’t deliver such a speech following last week’s UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements.
“The answer is that the president has basically decided that there was nothing more for him to do,” Ross posited. Following Kerry’s ultimately failed efforts to negotiate peace between Israel and the Palestinians in 2013 and 2014, “there was a certain degree of distance in terms of the president’s position and the secretary of state’s position,” he said.
In the past few years, Kerry still believed he could push the two sides back to the negotiation table, and therefore didn’t deliver such a speech in the interim and spoil those chances, Ross suggested.
In his more than hour-long speech, Kerry blasted settlements as a main obstacle to peace with the Palestinians, and said the “only way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state” was the two-state solution. Laying out six principles for peacemaking, Kerry also defended the US decision not to veto an anti-settlements resolution at the UN Security Council last week, allowing it to pass, but maintained the US would not impose a framework for a peace accord on the Jewish state.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back on Wednesday night, saying Kerry’s remarks were “almost as unbalanced as the anti-Israel resolution at the UN last week” that has since caused a diplomatic rift between Israel and world powers.
Veteran diplomat and former Foreign Ministry director-general Dore Gold joined the ranks of Kerry’s critics on Thursday, dismissing the secretary of state’s proposal out of hand for failing to account for Israel’s security.
“We need to worry at the end of the day that there will be defensible borders,” he told Army Radio in an interview on Thursday morning. “Mr. Kerry didn’t explain how Israel needs to defend itself when there is chaos in Syria that can also reach other states in the Middle East. Israel needs to remain strong, that’s the policy.”
Ross was more moderate, saying while Netanyahu made some “legitimate points” in his rebuttal, Kerry also raised a key issue. “If things remain on the current path, you’re headed toward a one-state outcome,” Ross cautioned.
Even if the timing and context of the speech was “questionable,” Ross said, “it’s an issue that at least needs to be discussed.”
According to a New Yorker report published Wednesday, Obama was roused to diplomatic action by President-elect Donald Trump’s “over the top” appointment of pro-settlement attorney David Friedman as the next American ambassador to the Israel.
The incoming president’s choice “had a lot of weight in the President’s thinking,” an unnamed senior Obama administration official told the magazine.
“The last thing you want to do as you leave office is to pick a fight with the organized Jewish community, but Friedman is so beyond the pale,” the administration official told the magazine. “He put his political and charitable support directly into the settlements; he compares Jews on the left to the kapos in the concentration camps — it just put it over the top.”
