Just the obvious

US Secretary of State John Kerry said it all, and as it is, when he told his audience at Harvard University last week that there is a direct link between Israeli settlement activity and the recent surge in violence in the occupied Palestinian territories.

“What is happening,” said Kerry, “is that unless we get going, a two-state solution can conceivably be stolen from everybody.”

He also said that “there has been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last year, and now you have this violence because there’s frustration that is growing.”

Well, settlement expansion on land stolen from the Palestinians is one major reason for frustration and anger.

The long, humiliating occupation, the restriction of Palestinians’ movement, imprisonment, killing, “preventive detention”, land confiscation, myriad arbitrary laws that oppress the people under occupation should be added and multiplied by the decades of Israeli yoke, and that would perhaps give a more accurate picture of the situation and reason for “frustration”.

Back to Kerry, Israeli officials were of course upset with his remarks, with some going as far as suggesting that the US State Department has traditionally been anti-Israel.

The ingratitude and absurdity of it all!

What the US secretary of state said came unrehearsed. Kerry simply stated the obvious.

Can anyone deny that the continued Israeli settlement activity on Palestinian land and the absence of hope in a political process that would give Palestinians their rights have everything to do with the their frustration and the violence witnessed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem?

Naturally Israel does not accept any responsibility for the start of another Palestinian uprising because it believes it is doing no wrong.

Now that the US secretary of state is planning to visit the area, he must be equally candid and direct when discussing the situation with the Israeli officials.

This is no time to sugarcoat policies or statements if the deteriorating situation in the Palestinian territories is to be stopped.