Netanyahu orders cabinet ministers not to cooperate with Palestinian counterparts, after Abbas’ request to join international conventions.
A senior Israeli official said that the ministers were updated by telephone over the course of the morning by Cabinet Secretary Avichai Mendelblit, who ordered communication stymied with Palestinian officials including ministers and director generals in response to the Palestinian unilateral actions. Only low-level field cooperation will be permitted, according to the Israeli official.
Netanyahu issued his order just hours after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry placed most of the blame on Israel for the recent crisis in peace talks during a Senate Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Tuesday.
Kerry said that the United States intends on continuing its efforts to promote a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, but “in the end the parties are going to have to make that decision.”
Kerry implied that Israel is mostly responsible for the crisis in talks and described the Palestinian application to United Nations institutions as a response to Israeli moves.
“Both sides, whether advertently or inadvertently, wound up in positions where things happened that were unhelpful,” he said, and went on to explain how the current crisis was created. “Clearly, going to these treaties is not helpful, and we have made that crystal-clear,” he said.
“Unfortunately, prisoners were not released on the Saturday they were supposed to be released. And so day went by, day two went by, day three went by. And then in the afternoon, when they were about to maybe get there, 700 settlement units were announced in Jerusalem and, poof, that was sort of the moment. We find ourselves where we are.”
The Palestinian Arabs don’t want to negotiate with Israel? That’s fine.
Israel should not be chasing after them begging for peace. Cut them loose and leave em to rot.
Separating the two peoples is long overdue and in the long run will make both happier.
I don’t like to make comments like this usually but is Kerry some kind of a moron. Someone needs to ask him straight to his face- since when did the negotiations revolve around prisoner release AND what was really benign building in a neighborhood never part of the negotiations? I know that most of this audience realizes that but why can’t anyone with an ear to an outlet that Kerry might hear ask that question. As apparently Israel has been negotiating with America and not the Palestinians someone needs to publicize that question and someone on the American front, if not Kerry, needs to answer it.