Outlets and journalists over the weekend and into Monday continued to unpack what the Washington Post bluntly described as the “failure” of Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent Israeli-Palestinian peace push, which had formally expired on April 29 but had functionally been suspended since the declaration of a unity agreement between the rival Palestinian Fatah and Hamas factions.
State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki had repeatedly emphasized that among other things Israel could not “be expected to negotiate with a government that does not believe in its right to exist.” The Washington Post, for its part, on Sunday declared that the aftermath of the talks’ collapse had left “plenty of bad options” that U.S. diplomats would have to head off:
One challenge comes from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has launched yet another reconciliation initiative with the Islamic Hamas movement. In theory a Palestinian accord that overcomes the split between the West Bank and Gaza Strip while providing for democratic elections could be a positive development, but the numerous “unity” plans announced in the past have foundered because of Hamas’s refusal to recognize Israel or renounce terrorism.
The Post specifically worried that Kerry may make good on past hints of “embracing one of Washington’s hoariest bad ideas, the issuance of a detailed U.S. plan for Palestinian statehood… [which] would satisfy some partisans but lead nowhere.”
Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg called on U.S. diplomats to draw lessons from what he described as a series of Israeli gambits aimed at creating space for a Palestinian state stretching back before 1948:
It is difficult to blame Kerry for expressing frustration with the Israelis (or with the Palestinians) over the current standoff. I endorse his belief that the status quo is unsustainable for Israel and a continued disaster for Palestinians. But over time I’ve noticed that Kerry and President Barack Obama often neglect to mention a true, and relevant, fact about the pursuit of peace in the Middle East: The Israelis pursued a two-state solution even before there was an Israel. The Palestinians, and their Arab advocates, have rejected each previous attempt to bring about such a solution. This does not absolve Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of its responsibility to stop settling its citizens on the West Bank. But it does suggest something about ultimate culpability.
Political and even legislative fallout from the end of the talks has been steadily building. A tense exchange between Psaki and veteran Associated Press diplomatic writer Matthew Lee in late April had already seen Lee declare “I remember you saying… they made progress on all the issues… I don’t understand how you can even make that claim, frankly, with a straight face, because…the situation on both sides is demonstrably worse today than it was back last July when this process began.”
There had before and have since been a range of proposals on the Hill to slash U.S. assistance to the Palestinians.
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