John Kerry Confers Statehood On Palestinian West Bank

Of course, as far as anybody knows, Kerry may have had in mind to make Gaza into an independent country as well.

Barry Rubin writes Kerry's Blunder: A Palestinian State? Not Yet:

Secretary of State John Kerry doesn’t seem to grasp his job. Now he has referred to Palestine as a country already. He said:

“It’s my hope that…as procedures are put in place both countries in order to empower” progress toward peace

Of course, it was a slip of the tongue. Yet the secretary of state is not supposed to contradict directly policy. The U.S. position is that Palestine is not yet a country and won’t be unless it makes peace with Israel on terms that Israel will accept. This comes in a little document known informally as the 1993 Oslo agreement.

John Kerry says "Palestine" is a country -- is he
getting a little impatient. Credit: Wiki Commons

At least the US position is supposed to be that the Arabs will not get a Palestinian state until they make peace based on terms acceptable to Israel. Based on the pre-conditions that the Abbas regime demands with rebuttal from the US, I suppose that one might get the impression that the US position may have changed.

After all, as Rubin points out:

the Obama Administration didn’t get to work [to block Abbas for unilaterally creating a Palestinian state] until almost a year after it was clear that this was the strategy of the Palestinian Authority (PA), not to make peace with Israel but to go around it and try to get a state unilaterally

Read the whole thing.

So does Kerry really see his job as negotiating peace between the Arabs and Israel, and thereby allow an Arab state to be created?

Or does Kerry already take it for granted that there already is a Palestinian state -- and he is just working on getting Israel to accept what he thinks is already a reality?

That would explain why the Abbas regime's constant incitement of hatred of Israel does not bother Kerry. It is merely another one of those "internal affairs" that the Obama administration prefers to ignore.

It is all very nice that Obama makes all those weapons available to Israel -- but does he have to keep creating the conditions that make Israel need them?

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