Kerry tells US Jewish leaders he fears for Israel’s future if no peace deal. At White House meet, secretary highlights Israel’s growing diplomatic isolation, demographic challenges;
By REBECCA SHIMONI STOIL, TOI August 9, 2013,
Secretary of State John Kerry and an elite US diplomatic team met with a small group of American Jewish leaders at the White House Thursday night to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that resumed last month.
An optimistic-sounding Kerry asked the Jewish leaders for their help in supporting the newly restarted talks, The Times of Israel learned, saying that he feared for Israel’s future if a peace deal is not reached.
Kerry told the fewer than two-dozen representatives of Jewish organizations that he really believes that both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas realize that there is a strategic imperative to act now. He noted that Israel faces the threat of diplomatic isolation and a demographic clock.
A number of the Jewish leaders pressed Kerry on Abbas’s upcoming address to the United Nations General Assembly. They expressed hope that Abbas would change the tone of his rhetoric during his speeches to the world body — a good-faith gesture to demonstrate outward Palestinian willingness to engage in peace talks. One observer noted that Kerry seemed receptive to the idea.
Other Jewish representatives pushed for Kerry to ask Abbas to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Kerry told the leaders that one of the lynchpins of the current peace process is the separation of Israel’s security assurances from the general negotiations, assurances he said would be guaranteed in a separate agreement with the US.
The security track is being worked out under the auspices of retired Marine Corps general John Allen, who is currently Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s special adviser for the Middle East Peace.
Kerry also emphasized the economic development track being pursued with the Palestinians, particularly the encouragement of private investment in the West Bank. The secretary of state, who announced less than a month ago the resumption of talks, said that this round of negotiations could be separated into five different components: security, economic development, international outreach, public outreach in the form of an open appeal for support, and the diplomatic negotiations themselves. These components, Kerry told the Jewish leaders, were effective when used in concert with the others.
Kerry did most of the talking during the 90-minute meeting, but he was joined by nearly a dozen administration officials including White House Special Envoy for Mideast Peace Martin Indyk, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, senior adviser Frank Lowenstein and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications Ben Rhodes.
Indyk remained silent, and Rice only spoke briefly, focusing on how deeply President Barack Obama was committed to the peace process.
The meeting was not listed on the public calendar for the White House, where it was held, or for the State Department. Unlike at the previous meeting with US Jewish leadership, held in March prior to Obama’s visit to Israel, the president was not present at Thursday’s talk.
The Jewish leadership was a virtual who’s who of the American Jewish community, representing a broad political spectrum, including representatives from the Orthodox Union as well as J Street, and including leaders such as the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman and the Conference of Presidents’ Malcolm Hoenlein.
This meeting was a soft sell for most attendees, without Kerry pressing them to take the message of support for peace talks home to their respective communities. The hard sell — a more organized push to market the peace talks to centrist US Jews — is anticipated to come later in August, in the run-up to Rosh Hashanah.
And the first thing that Abbas asked for is the release of terrorists with blood on their hands and the U.S. enthusiastically went along with it. Doesn’t bode well for the future especially with PM Netanyahu buckling once again.
Kerry speaks to the converted.
IL cannot depend on the US for its defense.
Needs to diversify, diversify and diversify.
Abbas is using the West (among them a lot of Jews) to try to destroy IL. The American people and the US Congress do not support the present US administration orientation.
This administration is bent on destroying capitalism rather than improving capitalism.
There are no centrist Jews. 70% are on the lt and 30% on the rt. ZERO% at the center.
Even Egypt has leadership patriotic enough to send the Soetoro blackmailers packing.
The israeli trash cannot remain in power here if suicide is not our will.
OUT with the unJews.
US assurances on security!? This is a joke on top of an oxymoron on top of a lie. when the Great One became president Israel already had PAPER assurances from Bush on the territories etc. Obama merely refused to recognize them. Of what value are US assurances under Obama? Nothing.
And this so called meeting with Jewish leaders That Kerry had? With Foxman? With J Street? The Council of Jewish Presidents? How about calling a spade a spade! This was a conference with Jewish Democrat kapos, with Jewish lapdogs.
These so-called Jewish leaders will sell Israel out in a heart-beat.
The only “peace process” available to Israel is national suicide. Israel fought for her borders and won them. That’s the way every other country of the world acquired their borders. It should be no different for Israel. Whose idea was it anyway for Israel to give away parcels of its national identlty in order to make peace with the Muslim hordes whose desired peace is defined with the words “all Jews dead and gone from the Middle East”? Kerry is an enemy of the Jews. End of story.
@ XLucid:
This very point was made by the parable of the servant the king and the fish as posted by yamit several times in the past.
When, oh WHEN will it sink in that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and one must simply grab the bull by the horns and face the music.
All this ‘being nice’, and the eternal worry as to what will the goyim think is a road with a dead end.
Rather than argue on RIDICULOUS premises, why not come to grips already with the fact that THEY MUST GO!
@ Bernard Ross said:
“this is the price of the mantra of security rather than legitimacy.”
One of the fundamental covenants of the Oslo Accords was the halt of violence and therefore security for Israel, as signed by Clinton as a witness to the agreement.
Israel never fought for legitimacy. As a result, Israel got neither the security nor the legitimacy.
Churchill’s quotation is still and perfectly applicable to the case: “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”
A most worthless assurance. this is the price of the mantra of security rather than legitimacy. This is what israel should be out on the street for, not just more housing and higher benefits. BB should be informing the nation of the US pressure rather than being a fig leaf for it.
I recently posted an article from four years ago in which I wrote that Netanyahu was given the choice to enter negotiations and get the best deal he can or be confronted by the UN imposing a solution. Obviously the US can stop the isolation or not.
This article has been updated and I expect it to be published by American Thinker and/or JPOST
In other words, if Israel does not commit national suicide by acceding to American demands, the US will withdraw its support of Israel.
Israel is being asked to choose the kind of poison it prefers. The Jewish State needs friends like John F. Kerry like it needs enemies.