Public Comment

In a move of outright vindictiveness, Israel has reneged on its promise to free Palestinian prisoners. Its announcement to construct 700 new settlements, was a direct insult to John Kerry’s laudable efforts to broker a peace agreement. Israel also announced their intention to withhold Palestinian tax revenue in an effort to intensify their suffering. Since the Oslo Accords, the number of Jewish settlers on Palestinian land has soured to more than 650,000 moving closer to Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election promise of one million Jews living in “Judea and Samaria”.  

In spite of Kerry’s frustrations he did not seek the’ nuclear option’ of withholding $3.2 billion in annual military aid. Propping up Israel with billions of aid money will ensure that it becomes a pariah state shunned by the international community and is an affront to US taxpayers many who are in desperate financial straits. The current Israeli policies are lifted from the playbook of apartheid South Africa.  

The constant mantra of demanding recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is code language for forcing the Palestinians to legitimize the occupation and condemning them to inferior class status. Israel looks more like a lump of Swiss cheese with holes carved out – dooming any prospect of a contiguous Palestinian state, and is a failure of US policy which tacitly enabled settlement expansion. Meanwhile the Palestinians remain stateless, impoverished, occupied, and second-class citizens inside of Israel.