John Kerry has delivered a stinging rebuke of the Israeli government, accusing it of making the establishment of a viable Palestinian state nearly impossible through the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
With Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu joining forces with president-elect Donald Trump to attack the Obama administration, the US secretary of state said Washington allowed a UN resolution critical of Israel to pass last week as a last-ditch effort to keep the idea of a “two-state solution” alive.
In the most detailed criticism by a US official of Israeli settlement construction, Mr Kerry said the West Bank was being “broken up into small parcels like a Swiss cheese that can never constitute a real state”. In a speech at the state department, he added: “The United States cannot properly defend Israel if we allow a viable two-state solution to be destroyed before our eyes.”