Outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry signaled in a speech last week that the Obama administration was still considering action on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in its final days, although it might fall short of a direct intervention.
There’s no way to “force-feed” peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Kerry said in a Nov. 29 speech at the Women’s Foreign Policy Group conference in Washington, D.C., but there are “other things we can do” to preserve a two-state solution.
It’s not clear whether President Obama favors any action on the two-state front, and Congress and the mainstream pro-Israel lobby have said they would vehemently oppose it.
Kerry also defended the Iran nuclear deal, as did the outgoing CIA director, John Brennan, in an interview with the BBC, part of what likely will be a full-court press by the Obama administration to persuade President-elect Donald Trump not to kill the 2015 agreement that exchanged a nuclear rollback for sanctions relief.
The Obama administration is coming under pressure from groups that favor an assertive U.S. posture on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to preserve the two-state solution before Trump takes office.
In a New York Times op-ed last week, former President Jimmy Carter urged Obama to back a U.N. Security Council resolution that would recognize Palestinian statehood. J Street, a liberal Jewish Middle East policy group, also has urged Obama to take actions to preserve two states as an outcome, including backing a “balanced” Security Council resolution.
Kerry, who spearheaded the last major round of talks between Israel and the Palestinians, in 2013-14, said in his speech that “no one has expended as much time as I have to try to move the process forward.
“But the old saying is real: You can lead a horse to water, you can’t make him drink,” he continued. “If they’re not prepared to take the risks — everybody knows what has to be done — but if they’re not ready, then there’s no way to force-feed it.” — jta