by Matthew Duss
How can talks succeed when, throughout the negotiations, Israel is building on the very land that would
comprise a Palestinian state?
There are a lot of reasons for the peace effort's failure, but people in Israel shouldn't ignore the bitter
truth—the primary sabotage came from the settlements.” This is what anonymous U.S. officials told journalist Nahum
Barnea, a prominent columnist in Israel’s most-read newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, in a candid interview about the collapse of Secretary of State
John Kerry’s nine-month-long effort to broker talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.
It’s not just people in Israel who shouldn’t ignore this bitter truth; it’s people in America, and particularly in
Washington, where there’s an entire industry dedicated to casting the Palestinians as eternal rejectionists and
downplaying the
impact of the settlements and occupation that sustain them. Basically, these officials are telling us more
explicitly what both Secretary of State John Kerry and
President
Obama have told us more diplomatically: Netanyahu’s unwillingness and/or inability to reign in the settlements
poisoned the negotiations, and is killing any chance of a final, two-state agreement.
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