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Israeli Settlement Plan Derailed Peace Talks, Kerry Says Mideast Frustration, the Sequel
(about 7 hours later)
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that Israel’s announcement of 700 new apartments for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem precipitated the bitter impasse in peace negotiations last week between Israel and the Palestinians. WASHINGTON — For those who suspect that the Middle East peace process has become a diplomatic drama, playing on an endless loop, Secretary of State John Kerry’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday could serve as Exhibit A.
While Mr. Kerry said both sides bore responsibility for “unhelpful” actions, he noted that the publication of tenders for housing units came four days after a deadline passed for Israel to release Palestinian prisoners and complicated Israel’s own deliberations over whether to extend the talks. Explaining to the senators why his latest efforts to bring together the Israelis and the Palestinians had almost broken down last week, Mr. Kerry could have been channeling Secretary of State James A. Baker III when he explained a similar impasse to House members 24 years ago.
“Poof, that was sort of the moment,” Mr. Kerry said in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. While Mr. Kerry said both sides bore responsibility for “unhelpful” actions, the precipitating event, he said, was Israel’s announcement of 700 new housing units for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem. That came three days after a deadline passed for Israel to release Palestinian prisoners, and it undercut an emerging deal to extend the negotiations.
Still, Mr. Kerry said that the Israelis and Palestinians were still talking, with the United States acting as a broker, and that if the two sides could get past the dispute over the prisoner release, they could return to substantive negotiations for a peace accord. “Poof, that was sort of the moment,” Mr. Kerry said. “We find ourselves where we are.”
“It’s up to them,” Mr. Kerry said. “They have to come to the conclusion that it’s worth it.” “I hope the parties will find a way back,” he added. “But, you know, we have an enormous amount on our plate.” Mr. Kerry warned that there were limits to the time that he and President Obama would devote to the peace process, “given the rest of the agenda, if they’re not prepared to commit to actually be there in a serious way.”
Mr. Kerry also criticized the Palestinian Authority for applying to join a number of international agencies, a move toward recognition of Palestinian statehood outside the context of peace negotiations. The Palestinians say they took those steps in response to Israel’s actions. Rewind to June 13, 1990: Mr. Baker, fed up after his own diplomatic efforts, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that if Israel’s right-wing government did not ease its conditions for talks with the Palestinians, there would be no progress. He was also incensed that Israel’s defense minister had visited two Jewish settlements in the West Bank, in what he later called a symbolic rebuff to the United States.
If the tit-for-tat cycle continues, Mr. Kerry said, the Obama administration will have less time and patience for the process, given the huge number of other foreign-policy crises in the world. “Unless all sides tempered their inflexibility,” Mr. Baker wrote in his 1995 memoir, “The Politics of Diplomacy,” “I said, ‘There won’t be any dialogue, and there won’t be any peace, and the United States of America can’t make it happen.’ ” Lest anyone in the Israeli government not get the message, Mr. Baker added: “Everybody over there should know that the telephone number is 1-202-456-1414. When you’re serious about peace, call us.” That number, then as now, is for the White House switchboard.
Much of the hearing was devoted to those other issues, with Mr. Kerry coming under particularly sharp questioning over the administration’s Syria policy. Defending the agreement with Russia on eliminating President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons, Mr. Kerry said that 54 percent of the stockpile had been removed from Syria, with two large shipments scheduled to leave the country in coming days. There are important differences between the two secretaries of state, starting with the fact that Mr. Baker was genuinely ready to walk away. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait two months after the House hearing gave him a perfect reason to put the peace talks on the back burner.
Mr. Kerry acknowledged, however, that Mr. Assad felt more secure in his position now than he had for many months – with his government making gains in the northern part of Syria – and said the time was not ripe for a negotiated solution to the civil war. Mr. Kerry, on the other hand, appears determined to keep the process alive. Even now, he noted, the Israelis and the Palestinians are talking, with the United States acting as a broker. If the two sides can get past the dispute over the Israeli prisoner release, he said, they can return to substantive negotiations for a peace accord.
“I think there’s a capacity to change Assad’s calculation, and so does the president,” he said. “The key is, how do you get the parties to understand there isn’t a military solution.” “Why is this moment different?” he asked as the senators listened with evident skepticism. “Because at the back end, the consequences are more stark and clear than they’ve been before, and there’s less space for mistakes. So we hope they’ll make it.”
Mr. Kerry also faced criticism of the administration’s response to Russian aggression in Ukraine, with Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, saying that the United States had declined to provide even defensive weapons to Ukraine’s army to help protect it from the Russians. Still, Mr. Kerry’s focus on settlement construction has surprised some in Israel, where the government’s publication of tenders for the building of housing units in Gilo, a Jewish area of East Jerusalem, has seemed a much less provocative issue for the Palestinians than Israel’s refusal to release its last batch of Palestinian prisoners.
Beyond that, Mr. McCain told Mr. Kerry, “You’re about to hit the trifecta,” with the lack of a political settlement in Syria, a collapse in peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, and the eventual failure of the nuclear negotiations between the major powers and Iran. Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East peace negotiator who worked for Mr. Baker, said Mr. Kerry’s emphasis on housing could complicate his efforts to get the process back on track, since it is likely to antagonize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Bristling, Mr. Kerry replied that peace talks during the Vietnam War took years, and that Mr. McCain offered no alternative except going to war. “You declare them all dead,” Mr. Kerry said to Mr. McCain. “I don’t. And we’ll see what the verdict is.” “He’ll get no points with it from the Palestinians, rattle Netanyahu’s cage, and make the Israeli political situation more complex by focusing on Israeli building not in the West Bank but in Jerusalem,” said Mr. Miller, who is now at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
But the housing issue has aroused some controversy in Israel. Tzipi Livni, the justice minister and the government’s chief negotiator with the Palestinians, said she believed that Uri Ariel, the housing minister, had acted deliberately to sabotage the peace effort.
The State Department insisted that Mr. Kerry did not place the blame for the crisis with either the Israelis or the Palestinians. He also criticized the Palestinian Authority for applying to join 15 international treaties and conventions, a move toward recognition of Palestinian statehood outside the peace process, which the United States staunchly opposes.
“Secretary Kerry has been consistently crystal clear that both sides have taken unhelpful steps, and at no point has he engaged in a blame game,” said the State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki. “The fact is, it is up to the parties and their leaders to determine whether they are going to make the tough choices needed, and that has always been the case.”
The most telling part of Tuesday’s hearing, however, may have been how few questions Mr. Kerry got on the peace process. The senators were more intent on questioning him about Russia’s efforts to destabilize eastern Ukraine, and about whether the administration was doing enough to respond to President Vladimir V. Putin’s aggression.
Another focus was Syria, where Mr. Kerry said that 54 percent of President Bashar al-Assad’s stockpile of chemical weapons had been removed from the country under an agreement with Russia, with two more big shipments scheduled to leave in coming days.
Mr. Kerry parried these questions calmly. He bristled only when Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, brought the discussion back to the Middle East and predicted that “you’re about to hit the trifecta” — failure to reach a political settlement in Syria, failure to strike a nuclear deal with Iran, and the collapse of talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
“It’s a tough issue,” Mr. Kerry said, glaring at his former Senate colleague. “But your friend Teddy Roosevelt also said the credit belongs to the people in the arena who are trying to get things done.”