Palestinians welcome Kerry’s words but question the timing
Attack on Israel’s settlement policy is on target but late
JERUSALEM // Palestinians yesterday welcomed US secretary of state John Kerry’s forceful condemnation of Israeli settlement activity but questioned the extent of its effect, coming weeks before Donald Trump takes office.
The president-elect has made clear he intends to support settlements.
“Thank you, but it’s too late,” said Issa Samander, head of the Land Defence Committee, which organises protests against settlements in the West Bank. “We need bravery while in office, not when it ends.” Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas leader in Gaza, said: “Kerry spent a long time as secretary watching settlement expansion and Israel destroying the peace process and did nothing.
“Did he just wake up after these years?”
An aide to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas welcomed Mr Kerry highlighting during his remarks on Wednesday that Israeli settlements were jeopardising Palestinian statehood, but took issue with other parts of his speech.
Palestinian differences with Mr Kerry include his not taking into account that there can be no equivalence between the Palestinian victim and the Israeli victimiser and his recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, said Husam Zomlot, strategic affairs adviser to Mr Abbas.
“I don’t want to remark that this speech was positive or negative,” Mr Zomlot told The National.
“We have our reservations, but we are motivated more by the half-full than the half-empty.”
“The most important part of Kerry’s speech was that there is a military occupation, including East Jerusalem ... and that this must end,” he said. Mr Kerry said hopes of a two-state solution were in jeopardy because of settlement building and occupation. Nearly 600,000 settlers live illegally in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, home to 2.6 million Palestinians.
He also specified that key elements of a peaceful resolution should include:
recognised international bor- ders between Israel and a viable and contiguous Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders, with mutually agreed land swaps
a “just, agreed, fair and realistic solution” to the refugee issue
Jerusalem as the capital of the two states
one Jewish and one Arab state, with mutual recognition and full and equal rights for all their respective citizens
But Mr Zomlot took issue with recognising Israel as a Jewish state. “We will not recognise any state, including Israel, by religious definitions. A state is a state for us.” He also criticised Mr Kerry for appearing to apportion blame and responsibility to both Israel and Palestine.
“He kept saying both sides. There is a problem of equating victim and victimiser and those under occupation with those who have engaged in ethnic cleansing all these years.
“You can’t equate incitement with bulldozing, annexing land and building new colonial settlements,” he said.
But he praised Mr Kerry “for saying that settlements have nothing to do with security, that some of them are closer to Jordan than to Israel and that they are being built to jeopardise any possible Palestinian state”.
Mr Samander, the anti-settlement activist, said he had mixed feelings about Mr Kerry’s speech. “On the one hand, what he said is good, but at the same time, we put our hands on our hearts fearing what will happen on the ground. We had good words from some administrations in the past but no change on the ground.”
He said that unless Israel ended the occupation, the Palestinians should go to the International Criminal Court to stop Israeli settlements. Mr Samander and Mr Hamad said the Palestinians now needed to heal the rift between Fatah and Hamas.
“We have to unite to make our policies more effective,” Mr Hamad said.
Ashraf Ajrami, former Palestinian Authority minister for prisoner affairs, said Mr Kerry “gave a balanced speech that concentrated on the main issues, especially the danger of settlements”.
“We need to have strong pressure on the Israeli government and at the same time speak with Israeli society to convince Israelis they can have a solution guaranteeing Israel’s security.” Mr Zomlot said the focus would now shift to the January 15 Middle East peace conference convened by France that will bring together 70 countries in Paris with the goal of reaffirming the necessity of a twostate solution.
“We want to create sufficient mechanisms to ensure that the international vision is implemented and international law adhered to.” He declined to be more specific, saying: “It’s best to keep things open for surprises.”