Wallstrom last month raised ire in Israel when she seemed to imply that there was a connection between Palestinian attacks and their “desperate situation”. The US, the global community and many Israelis have endorsed the “two-state solution” _ establishing a Palestinian state and ending Israel’s control over millions of Palestinians in territories occupied in the 1967 war.
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If it were to happen, Kerry said, Israel would be forced to assume all governance in the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu likened claims that the settlements were hindering peace to the notion once prevalent in some circles that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the core of the broader Middle East conflict.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and rejected USA warnings that Israel was devolving toward a single state.
“Israel will not be a binational state”, Netanyahu said emphatically at the opening of his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, according to the Times of Israel.
But despite Netanyahu’s pledges, Jewish settlement of the West Bank continues apace, while confusion over his true intentions grows by the day. Palestinians say it is rooted in frustrations over Israel’s almost 50-year occupation of the West Bank.
Kerry noted during the recent trip that Abbas had told him the level of Palestinian despair about the future was unprecedented.
Human rights groups, meanwhile, including Amnesty International, have suggested that Israeli forces have employed a “shoot-to-kill” policy against alleged Palestinian attackers – even when the latter did not constitute an immediate threat. He cited troubling school textbooks, maps, speeches and media reports that have to be revised.
Young people in the United States and Israel need to be educated about the value of the relationship between the two countries, Hillary Rodham Clinton said.
“The Israeli and Palestinian people deserve better, but the current path is not leading to a more peaceful future”, Kerry said.
“It is important that that not become a slogan, not become a throw-away phrase, that it becomes a policy, which is what it is meant to be”, he said.
He told the Saban Forum in Washington that “the truth is that many of those arguing against the PA simply don’t believe in two states”.
Netanyahu condemned the comments, calling them “scandalous” and said that “apparently the Swedish minister expects Israelis to present their necks to those who want to stab them”.
“Israel has violated all signed agreements, stopped negotiations, and erased the principles of the two-state solution”, PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat asserted after Israel said it planned to exclude the European Union from the peace process.
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On Friday. Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom says Israel is conducting “extra-judicial executions” of Palestinian stabbers, shooters and drivers using their vehicles to mow down innocent Israelis.
