Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent days announced tough new security measures for Palestinians in the West Bank and demanded in his meeting with Mr. Kerry on Tuesday that the USA recognize settlement construction in the West Bank in exchange for Israeli steps to calm tensions there.
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He too accused Kerry of siding with Israel and decried the US state secretary’s description of “lone-wolf” attacks by desperate Palestinians as acts of “terrorism”.
A Palestinian was shot and killed during clashes with Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry said. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton took unsuccessful stabs at a two-state solution during their final months in office.
“Every US administration since 1967, Democrat and Republican alike, has opposed Israeli settlement activity beyond the 1967 lines, and this administration’s been no different and will be no different”, State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said.
A Palestinian was killed while throwing a Molotov cocktail at soldiers during a security raid on the West Bank village of Katana, south of Ramallah on Thursday morning, the IDF said.
Having no other choice, many Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank, under complete Israeli control, are forced to build without permits to be able to provide a shelter for their families, risking demolition of their residential structures by Israeli troops.
However, Kerry’s words ignore what the discrepancy in the number of lives lost reveals: Israelis encounter violence through (the fear of) occasional, isolated attacks, while Palestinians are subject to a regime of systematic extrajudicial killings, dispossession, displacement, and political persecution.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that Iran would support the Palestinian uprising against Israel “in any way we can”. He said that the entire world is witness to militant Islamic terrorism and that Israel is fighting those forces directly and indirectly, by targeting the sources of incitement, as stated by Haaretz.
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In blessing Israel’s condemnation of “terrorism”, Kerry pivots from blatantly erasing Israel’s violence towards Palestinians to outright approving of it. According to him, there was a broad understanding with the Palestinians about the need to view terror as a threat to Palestine no less than it is to Israel. Both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Obama placed condolence calls to his family this week.
