adminISRAEL and the Palestinians appeared determined yesterday to seal their divorce as Washington’s nine-month deadline for reaching a Mideast peace deal was to expire, leaving peace hopes in tatters. After more than a year of intensive shuttle diplomacy by US Secretary of State John Kerry with the initial aim of brokering a deal by April 29, Washington’s patience appeared to be growing dangerously thin as both sides moved to distance themselves from the crisis-hit talks.
Speaking to a closed meeting of senior international diplomats and officials, Kerry reportedly said that if Israel didn’t seize the opportunity to make peace soon, it risked becoming an “apartheid state,” a US news website reported Sunday.
“A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative,” he said, according to a transcript of the meeting obtained by The Daily Beast website.
“Because a unitary state winds up either being an apartheid state with second class citizens — or it ends up being a state that destroys the capacity of Israel to be a Jewish state,” he said.
Apartheid is the term for the system of racial segregation put in place by the white supremacist regime in South Africa from 1948 until the country’s first all-race elections in 1994.
Although the process was at a point of “confrontation and hiatus,” Kerry insisted it was not dead — yet. — Xinhua.
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