PM Netanyahu slams Kerry speech, says it was ‘skewed against Israel’

“As these settlement blocks expand and connect to each other and they build Jewish-only highways for Jewish-only settlements, the Palestinians are becoming more and more ghettoized, and the idea that there might be a Palestinian state is looking less and less possible”, Zunes says.

The real impediment to peace and to the two-state solution is that the Palestinians (and many Arabs) refuse to concede Israel’s right to exist.

If our State Department truly can’t figure this out, that’s scary.

In a swiftly issued statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Kerry of bias.

Kerry panned the Israeli government’s settlement policy earlier Wednesday, describing it as an obstacle to lasting peace with the Palestinians.

“We do not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically elected government of an ally, ” the statement read from Downing Street.

He also pointed out that the Israeli government recently approved the construction of a new settlement well east of the separation barrier dividing Israel and the West Bank – one that will be closer to Jordan than Israel. British Prime Minister Theresa May also said his remarks were inappropriate.

Kerry said it has been longstanding US policy to oppose Israeli settlements, and “it is certainly not the role of any country to vote against its own policies”. The extraordinary display of discord between allies – with USA and Israeli officials openly disparaging each other – has also pitted President Barack Obama against President-elect Donald Trump, who has firmly taken Netanyahu’s side.

The spokesman also pointedly referred to the support for Mr Kerry’s comments from around the world.

Some are viewing Downing Street’s move as an attempt to align the United Kingdom with the incoming Trump administration.

“We can not continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect”.

“Regrettably some seem to believe that the USA friendship means that the US must accept any policy regardless of our own interests, our own positions, our own words, our own principles, even after urging again and again that the policy must change”. “Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!”

Further media reports suggest that a planned forthcoming meeting between Netanyahu and May has been cancelled as a direct response the UK’s vote and against the backdrop of rumours that the United Kingdom delegation at the UN had been intimately involved in crafting the resolution behind the scenes. In 2005, Israel dismantled all settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank. Now that the administration’s views are crystal clear, pundits should spare us the back and forth on whether its eleventh-hour obsessions are good for peace – no one as smart as Obama or Kerry can possibly believe that it is.

“That’s what we were standing up for: Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state, living side by side in peace and security with its neighbors”, he said. Doing so, Kerry said, serves only to maintain the one-state status quo – said that appears to be precisely their point.

Castigating the Netanyahu coalition, Kerry said it was “the most right-wing in Israel history with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements”.

Mr Kerry spent months in a failed effort to try to broker a deal between Israelis and Palestinians in 2013-2014 and, like Mr Obama, has grown deeply frustrated with the Israeli government and the continuing expansion of settlements. “The resolution I introduce next week when Congress reconvenes will express the sense of the Senate that we stand in support of Israel and disapprove of the U.N.’s actions”.

In his speech Wednesday, Kerry asked Israel to end the construction of internationally unrecognized settlements and urged Palestine to reject violence and extremism. “He makes a biased comparison between building houses in the east of Jerusalem and terror that kills innocents, and after that he talks only about Israel and only merely condemns terror”, he said.