[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:

At the start of his first term, President Obama pushed Abbas into taking a
hardline position when he demanded an Israeli settlement freeze that the
Palestinians had never required as a condition for negotiations.

And now, days after Mr. Kerry told a group that Israel had absolutely no
choice but accept a deal with the Palestinians come-what-may and implied he
wanted Netanyahu removed from power, Mahmoud Abbas had the PLO take an
unprecedented hard line - ruling out even a land swap.

Mr. Kerry no doubt has been encouraged by many radical left American Jews
and Israeli Jews drooling at the idea that somehow the devil incarnate,
Binyamin Netanyahu, the man whose defeat of Shimon Peres at the polls after
the assassination of Rabin stopped the Israel from entering Paradise, might
somehow be brought down by a crisis with the Palestinians.

A technical note: the critical working assumption of Mr. Kerry's remarks -
that from a demographic standpoint time is working against Israel - doesn't
jibe with reality.]
======================


Exclusive: Kerry Warns Israel Could Become ‘An Apartheid State’
Josh Rogin The Daily Beast 04.27.14
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/27/exclusive-kerry-warns-israel-could-become-an-apartheid-state.html

The secretary of state said that if Israel doesn’t make peace soon, it could
become ‘an apartheid state,’ like the old South Africa. Jewish leaders are
fuming over the comparison.

If there’s no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon,
Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state,” Secretary of State John Kerry
told a room of influential world leaders in a closed-door meeting Friday.

Senior American officials have rarely, if ever, used the term "apartheid" in
reference to Israel, and President Obama has previously rejected the idea
that the word should apply to Jewish State. Kerry's use of the loaded term
is already rankling Jewish leaders in America—and it could attract unwanted
attention in Israel, as well.

It wasn't the only controversial comment on the Middle East that Kerry made
during his remarks to the Trilateral Commission, a recording of which was
obtained by The Daily Beast. Kerry also repeated his warning that a failure
of Middle East peace talks could lead to a resumption of Palestinian
violence against Israeli citizens. He suggested that a change in either the
Israeli or Palestinian leadership could make achieving a peace deal more
feasible. He lashed out against Israeli settlement-building. And Kerry said
that both Israeli and Palestinian leaders share the blame for the current
impasse in the talks.

Kerry also said that at some point, he might unveil his own peace deal and
tell both sides to “take it or leave it.”

“A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real
alternative. Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid
state with second class citizens—or it ends up being a state that destroys
the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state,” Kerry told the group of senior
officials and experts from the U.S., Western Europe, Russia, and Japan.
“Once you put that frame in your mind, that reality, which is the bottom
line, you understand how imperative it is to get to the two state solution,
which both leaders, even yesterday, said they remain deeply committed to.”

According to the 1998 Rome Statute, the “crime of apartheid” is defined as
“inhumane acts… committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of
systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other
racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that
regime.” The term is most often used in reference to the system of racial
segregation and oppression that governed South Africa from 1948 until 1994.

Former president Jimmy Carter came under fire in 2007 for titling his book
on Middle East peace Palestine: Peace or Apartheid. Carter has said publicly
that his views on Israeli treatment of the Palestinians are a main cause of
his poor relationship with President Obama and his lack of current
communication with the White House. But Carter explained after publishing
the book that he was referring to apartheid type policies in the West Bank,
not Israel proper, and he was not accusing Israel of institutionalized
racism.

“Apartheid is a word that is an accurate description of what has been going
on in the West Bank, and it's based on the desire or avarice of a minority
of Israelis for Palestinian land,” Carter said.

“Injecting a term like apartheid into the discussion doesn’t advance that
goal [of peace],” Obama said. “It’s emotionally loaded, historically
inaccurate, and it’s not what I believe.”

Leading experts, including Richard Goldstone, a former justice of the South
African Constitutional Court who led the United Nations fact-finding mission
on the Gaza conflict of 2008 and 2009, have argued that comparisons between
the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians and “apartheid” are offensive and
wrong.

“One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing again is
that Israel pursues ‘apartheid’ policies,” Goldstone wrote in The New York
Times in 2011. “It is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel,
calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations.”

In a 2008 interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, then-Sen. Barack Obama shot down
the notion that the word “apartheid” was acceptable in a discussion about
Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians:

“There’s no doubt that Israel and the Palestinians have tough issues to work
out to get to the goal of two states living side by side in peace and
security, but injecting a term like apartheid into the discussion doesn’t
advance that goal,” Obama said. “It’s emotionally loaded, historically
inaccurate, and it’s not what I believe.”

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told The Daily Beast that Kerry was
simply repeating his view, shared by others, that a two-state solution is
the only way for Israel to remain a Jewish state in peace with the
Palestinians.

“Secretary Kerry, like Justice Minister Livni, and previous Israeli Prime
Ministers Olmert and Barak, was reiterating why there's no such thing as a
one-state solution if you believe, as he does, in the principle of a Jewish
State. He was talking about the kind of future Israel wants and the kind of
future both Israelis and Palestinians would want to envision,” she said.
“The only way to have two nations and two peoples living side by side in
peace and security is through a two-state solution. And without a two-state
solution, the level of prosperity and security the Israeli and Palestinian
people deserve isn't possible.”

But leaders of pro-Israel organizations told The Daily Beast that Kerry’s
reference to “apartheid” was appalling and inappropriately alarmist because
of its racial connotations and historical context.

Yet Israel's leaders have employed the term, as well. In 2010, for example,
former Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak used language very
similar to Kerry's. "As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river
there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either
non-Jewish, or non-democratic," Barak said. "If this bloc of millions
of ­Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."

“While we’ve heard Secretary Kerry express his understandable fears about
alternative prospects for Israel to a two-state deal and we understand the
stakes involved in reaching that deal, the use of the word ‘apartheid’ is
not helpful at all. It takes the discussion to an entirely different
dimension,” said David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish
Committee, an organization that has been supportive of Kerry’s peace process
initiative. “In trying to make his point, Kerry reaches into diplomatic
vocabulary to raise the stakes, but in doing so he invokes notions that have
no place in the discussion.”

Kerry has used dire warnings twice in the past to paint a picture of doom
for Israel if the current peace process fails. Last November, Kerry warned
of a third intifada of Palestinian violence and increased isolation of
Israel if the peace process failed. In March, Democrats and Republican alike
criticized Kerry for suggesting that if peace talks fail, it would bolster
the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

“It’s in the Palestinian playbook to tie Israel to these extreme notions of
time being on the Palestinian side, that demographics are on the Palestinian
side, and that Israel has to confront notions of the Jewishness of the
state,” Harris said.

Kerry on Friday repeated his warning that a dissolution of the peace process
might lead to more Palestinian violence. “People grow so frustrated with
their lot in life that they begin to take other choices and go to dark
places they’ve been before, which forces confrontation,” he said.

The secretary of state also implied, but did not say outright, that if the
governments of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu or Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas left power, there could be a change in the
prospects for peace. If “there is a change of government or a change of
heart,” Kerry said, “something will happen.”

Kerry criticized Israeli settlement construction as being unhelpful to the
peace process and he also criticized Palestinian leaders for making
statements that declined to recognize the right of Israel to exist as a
Jewish state.

“There is a fundamental confrontation and it is over settlements. Fourteen
thousand new settlement units announced since we began negotiations. It’s
very difficult for any leader to deal under that cloud,” Kerry said.

He acknowledged that the formal negotiating process that he initiated and
led since last summer may soon stop. But he maintained that his efforts to
push for a final settlement will continue in one form or another.

“The reports of the demise of the peace process have consistently been
misunderstood and misreported. And even we are now getting to the moment of
obvious confrontation and hiatus, but I would far from declare it dead,”
Kerry said. “You would say this thing is going to hell in a hand basket, and
who knows, it might at some point, but I don’t think it is right now, yet.”

Kerry gave both Israeli and Palestinian leaders credit for sticking with the
peace process for this long. But he added that both sides were to blame for
the current impasse in the talks; neither leader was ready to make the tough
decisions necessary for achieving peace.

“There’s a period here where there needs to be some regrouping. I don’t
think it’s unhealthy for both of them to have to stare over the abyss and
understand where the real tensions are and what the real critical decisions
are that have to be made,” he said. “Neither party is quite ready to make it
at this point in time. That doesn’t mean they don’t have to make these
decisions.”

Kerry said that he was considering, at some point, publicly laying out a
comprehensive U.S. plan for a final agreement between the Israelis and the
Palestinians, in a last ditch effort to forge a deal before the Obama
administration leaves office in 2017.

“We have enough time to do any number of things, including the potential at
some point in time that we will just put something out there. ‘Here it is
folks. This is what it looks like. Take it or leave it,’” Kerry said.