Less than three weeks before its departure, the Obama administration had one final slap for Israel.
“If the choice is one state,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in a more than hour-long speech Wednesday, “Israel can either be Jewish or democratic, it cannot be both, and it won’t ever really be at peace.”
Throughout his eight years in office, Obama has been a critic of Israel, the closest ally the United States has in the Middle East. He consistently appeared to take the side of any country with which Israel was in dispute.
The U.S.’s 2015 one-sided nuclear agreement with Iran was a giant punch to the Jewish state, and last week’s U.S. abstention from a United Nations Security Counsel resolution declaring Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem illegal was another. Adding insult to injury, U.S. officials now have acknowledged they suggested ways in which the resolution could be written so they could abstain from it and not block it, as they have similar previous resolutions.
We believe there is room for compromise on the settlements, seized by Israel in 1967, but we don’t believe the way to achieve it is to constantly criticize your ally.