When Ha’aretz, the left-wing Israeli paper, comes up with the headline “Kerry's cease-fire draft revealed:
U.S. plan would let Hamas keep its rockets”, you know that something is very,
very wrong.
The Middle East policy of the Obama administration has become
insane! One can only look at the US and wonder - how is it possible that
despite all the checks and balances built into the US political system we have
an administration that sides with Hamas whose Charter, Article 7, reads:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews
(killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones
and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and
kill him."? Article 13 of the Hamas Charter reads: There is no
solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.
Either John Kerry screwed up on his own, in which case he should
resign, or this was explicit Obama policy, in which case Congress should consider
impeachment.
Barak Ravid,
writes in Ha’aretz. Excerpts:
The press conference
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
convened together with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Egyptian Foreign
Minister Sameh Shukry was one of Kerry's most embarrassing incidents since
taking office. And there were quite a few in the last year and a half.
A few hours before
the press conference began, the Israeli security cabinet ministers unanimously
rejected Kerry's cease-fire plan draft. Kerry, as is his wont, seemed and
sounded as if he came from a parallel universe. He claimed to have never
presented Israel with a formal offer for a cease-fire, slammed the Israeli
media's "mischievous reports" and promised that Netanyahu's office
will issue a clarification.
As if that wasn't
enough, Kerry claimed he made significant progress in the cease-fire talks and
said, deadpan, that the disagreements with Israel are purely on matters of
terminology. Reality, of course, was completely different. If anything happened
on Friday it was another deep crisis in trust between Israeli senior cabinet
members and the American secretary of state.
The draft Kerry
passed to Israel on Friday shocked the cabinet ministers not only because it
was the opposite of what Kerry told them less than 24 hours earlier, but mostly
because it might as well have been penned by Khaled Meshal.
It was everything Hamas could have hoped for.
The document
recognized Hamas' position in the Gaza Strip, promised the organization
billions in donation funds and demanded no dismantling of rockets, tunnels or
other heavy weaponry at Hamas' disposal. The document placed Israel and Hamas
on the same level, as if the first is not a primary U.S. ally and as if the
second isn't a terror group which overtook part of the Palestinian Authority in
a military coup and fired thousands of rockets at Israel.
On Saturday, the
State Department distributed photos of Kerry's meeting with Qatar and Turkey's
foreign ministers in Paris. The three appear jovial and happy-go-lucky. Other
photographs show Kerry carousing romantically with the Turkish foreign minister
in the pastoral grounds of the U.S. ambassador's home in Paris, as if the
Turkish official's prime minister didn't just say a few days ago that Israel is
10 times worse than Hitler.
The secretary of
state's draft empowered the most radical and problematic elements in the region
– Qatar, Turkey, and Hamas – and was a slap on the face to the rapidly forming
camp of Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the
United Arab Emirates, who have many shared interests. What Kerry's draft spells
for the internal Palestinian political arena is even direr: It crowns Hamas and
issues Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with a death warrant.
It's not clear what
Kerry was thinking when he presented this draft. It's unclear what he had in
mind when he convened the Paris summit. It can only be seen as surreal. Along
with foreign ministers from Europe's major nations Kerry greeted with regal
honors Hamas' Qatari and Turkish patrons, ignoring what Israel, Egypt, and the
Palestinian Authority might have had to say.
Kerry isn’t
anti-Israeli; on the contrary, he's a true friend to Israel. But his conduct in
recent days over the Gaza cease-fire raises serious doubts over his judgment
and perception of regional events. It's as if he isn't the foreign minister of
the world's most powerful nation, but an alien, who just disembarked his
spaceship in the Mideast. For a few moments Friday one could not avoid
recalling the things Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said about Kerry, and admit
that despite the fact that it wasn't appropriate, he may have had a point.
If Kerry did
anything on Friday it was to thwart the possibility of reaching a cease-fire in
Gaza. Instead of promoting a cease-fire, Kerry pushed it away. If this failed
diplomatic attempt leads Israel to escalate its operation in Gaza, the American
secretary of state will be one of those responsible for every additional drop
of blood that is spilled.
