WASHINGTON (AP) – Secretary of State John Kerry is ending 2014 much in the same way he started it, frustrated in efforts to push Israel and Palestinians toward peace.
With a diplomatic showdown looming this past week over Arab plans to force Israel from occupied Palestinian lands within three years, Kerry prepared for a quick trip to Jordan in hopes of finding a calmer alternative.
By Thursday, the crisis appeared to have been averted when Palestinian and Jordanian officials said they would not push their resolution to an immediate vote in the U.N. Security Council, partly because the U.S. threatened a veto.
The fast-moving political drama was a small, if temporary, victory for America’s chief diplomat in his quest to end generations of fighting and tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. But it also showed how unlikely it is that Kerry can help restart peace talks soon, much less achieve the lasting truce he long has hoped to arrange.
“If people come together, work together, exert an effort to try to find the common ground here, I’m confident that the people of Israel are as interested in peace as are the people in Palestine, in the West Bank, in Jordan, and in the region,” Kerry said recently.