Meanwhile, Israel condemned as “scandalous” what it saw as a suggestion by the Swedish foreign minister that its forces have unlawfully killed Palestinians involved in a surge of street violence. He questioned how Israel could possibly maintain its character as a Jewish Democratic state if this were to happen.
Advertisement
“Settlements are no excuse for violence”, Kerry said.
Israel’s prime minister insisted Sunday that his country is not heading toward becoming a binational state, rejecting a warning to that effect by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
The United States, 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. But despite Netanyahu’s pledges, Jewish settlement of the West Bank continues apace, while confusion over his true intentions grows by the day.
The “root cause of the problem”, Netanyahu said in a video address Sunday to the annual Saban Forum, is that “the Palestinians have not yet been willing to cross that conceptual bridge, the emotional bridge of giving up the dream of not a state next to Israel, but of a state instead of Israel”.
Kerry noted during the recent trip that Abbas had told him the level of Palestinian despair about the future was unprecedented.
The Palestinian attacks, fuelled in part by strife over a contested Jerusalem shrine as well as a peacemaking process deadlocked since early 2014, have killed 19 Israelis and a US citizen. He cited troubling school textbooks, maps, speeches and media reports that have to be revised.
“I would as president begin to move forward again”, Clinton said, adding that there are “steps short of a final agreement” the sides could achieve, for instance in determining some borders.
“If you are not sitting down, if all you are doing is hurling invective at each other on a daily basis, there is no prayer of beginning that kind of conversation”, he said.
A Palestinian demonstrator uses a slingshot to hurl rocks at Israeli forces during clashes following a demonstration against Israeli occupation, in the Palestinian town of al-Bireh on the outskirts of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, November 29, 2015.
“With every passing year we must tie the bonds tighter, reach out to the next generation”, the front-runner for the Democratic Party presidential nomination said Sunday to the Saban Forum in Washington, an annual conference of American and Israeli leaders.
“The only workable solution is not a unitary state, but a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state”, Netanyahu said, reiterating his objection to the one-state solution.
Advertisement
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks at a meeting at the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, last month in Israel.
