Kerry: Israel shifting towards unitary state which is ‘impossible to manage’

The US Secretary of State John Kerry said the Israeli government doesn’t know how it wants to solve the conflict with the Palestinians and with its current policies it will turn into a “unitary state that is an impossible entity to manage”.

In a lengthy interview with the New Yorker magazine, Kerry explained that he is particularly concerned that the Palestinian Authority could collapse causing its 30,000 security officers to scatter; adding that chaos and increasingly violent clashes with Israel would follow.

Kerry said he believed there was a solution to the conflict which would be good for Israel and even better for the Palestinians as well as the region.

“People would make so much money. There’d be so many jobs created. There could be peace. And you would be stronger for it. Because nobody that I know or have met in the West Bank is anxious to have jihadis come in,” he said.

However, the senior US official warned that the alternative would be to do nothing and have things get worse.

“There will be more Hezbollah. There will be more rockets. And they’ll all be pointed in one direction. And there will be more people on the border. And what happens then? You’re going to be one big fortress? I mean, that’s not a way to live,” he explained.

The magazine quotes State Department aides explaining that Kerry is exasperated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a range of reasons including the injustice of settlement building in the West Bank to the way he employs Yitzhak Molcho, his lawyer and confidant, to stifle even the most inconsequential negotiation.

When asked if he could imagine an end to the state of Israel, Kerry said: “No, I don’t believe that’s going to happen.”

“It’s just, what is it going to be like, is the question. Will it be a democracy? Will it be a Jewish state? Or will it be a unitary state with two systems, or some draconian treatment of Palestinians, because to let them vote would be to dilute the Jewish state? I don’t know. I have no answer to that. But the problem is, neither do they. Neither do the people who are supposed to be providing answers to this. It is not an answer to simply continue to build in the West Bank and to destroy the homes of the other folks you’re trying to make peace with and pretend that that’s a solution.”