April 8, 2014 | Quote
Middle East Collapse: Does Kerry Finally Get It?
Maybe Secretary of State John Kerry should have done a “reality check” a year ago. If he had, he wouldn’t have wasted a lot of time, money and prestige on a dead end “peace process” – nor would his colleagues be talking on background to The Post to prove they never fell for his Middle East peace fantasies.
Just ahead of news of the talks’ collapse, unnamed Obama officials rushed forth to tell the public (and Kerry) that he “risks being seen as trying too hard at the expense of a range of other pressing international issues, and perhaps even his reputation, according to several senior administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity about sensitive internal and diplomatic matters. ‘A point will come where he has to go out and own the failure,’ an official said. For now, the official said, Kerry needs to ‘lower the volume and see how things unfold.’” Even former Obama adviser Dennis Ross, who has a long history of unsuccessful shuttle diplomacy, warned, “It’s not like we have a lot of good things going on internationally right now. When other things aren’t going so well, this tends to look like just part of a piece. My own recommendation would be to think hard about how this affects everything else you’re doing.”
That time to own failure seems to have come. On Friday, word got out that a “meeting of top negotiators and chief U.S. Mideast envoy Martin Indyk devolved into a shouting match early Thursday. Kerry’s phone appeals to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas later Thursday had no apparent effect.” Few of Obama’s critics are surprised. Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies tells me, “Kerry’s failure here was, unfortunately, predictable. The Palestinians since 2009 have made recognition at the UN — not peace — their top priority.”