Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni (AFP/Nicholas Kamm)

By Alan Hart

Who was it? Justice Minister and chief negotiator (with the Palestinians) Tzipi Livni. What did she say?

On 9 May she said on Army Radio that Israeli settlements were to blame for the failure of peace talks. “The settlers want to prevent us from living a normal life and do not accept the authority of the law… Settlers are preventing us from reaching a resolution… Settlement construction makes it impossible to defend Israel around the world.”

At the start of his effort to get a peace process going more than nine months ago, U.S. Secretary of State Kerry wanted a settlement freeze. He believed it would demonstrate his seriousness to all concerned and especially the Palestinians. But Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said he could not deliver a settlement freeze because his government would fall if he tried to go down that road.

I imagine that frightened Kerry because he knows that if Netanyahu’s government was brought down it would most likely be replaced by one that could be described, objectively, as neo-fascist. (Strange though it may seem, those to the extreme right of Netanyahu in his coalition government, those of the neo-fascist tendency, sometimes give him the appearance of being a moderate!)

So Kerry and President Obama surrendered to Netanyahu just as he had surrendered to the settlers and their mouthpieces in government.

Full article at AlanHart.net