KERRY DENIES CALLING ISRAEL ‘APARTHEID STATE’

Washington, 29 Jumadil Akhir 1435/29 April 2014 (MINA) – US Secretary of State John Kerry vehemently denied he had ever called Israel “an apartheid state,” amid a row over comments reportedly made during a private meeting.

“I do not believe, nor have I ever stated, publicly or privately that Israel is an apartheid state or that it intends to become one,” the top US diplomat said on Monday in a strong statement after calls for him to resign or at least apologize for the alleged comments.

“Anyone who knows anything about me knows that without a shred of doubt.”

But Kerry, who has seen his dogged efforts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians collapse, did suggest that he had used a poor choice of words during his speech on Friday to international experts of the Trilateral Commission.

“I have been around long enough to also know the power of words to create a mis-impression, even when unintentional, and if I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term to have a Jewish state and two nations and two peoples living side by side in peace and security is through a two-state solution.”

The US-based Daily Beast online news site reported that Kerry had warned that “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”.

The website said it had been given a recording of Kerry’s speech, which sparked a furore in Israel and led one Republican senator to call for his resignation, Al Jazeera quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

Kerry has “repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to countenance a world in which Israel is made a pariah,” said Senator Ted Cruz.

“Before any more harm is done to our national security interests and our critical alliance with the state of Israel,” Kerry should offer his resignation and President Barack Obama should “accept it,” he added.

Veteran Republican Senator John McCain also said Kerry should clarify his comments immediately and apologize, but laughed at the suggestion the top US diplomat should step down.

In his statement, Kerry said: “I will not allow my commitment to Israel to be questioned by anyone, particularly for partisan, political purposes.”

Israel risks becoming apartheid state

US Secretary of State John Kerry has said that Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state” if there is no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Kerry’s comments were published on Sunday by The Daily Beast news website, which obtained a recording of his remarks on Friday to the Trilateral Commission, a non-governmental organisation which includes senior officials and experts from the US, Western Europe, Russia and Japan.

“A two-state solution will be clearly underscored as the only real alternative. 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,” said Kerry.

“Once you put that frame in your mind, that reality, which is the bottom line, you understand how imperative it is to get to the two-state solution, which both leaders, even yesterday, said they remain deeply committed to.”

The US-based The Daily Beast reported that senior US officials have rarely used the term in reference to Israel.

Jen Psaki, the spokesperson for the US State Department, said: “Secretary Kerry, like Justice Minister Livni, and previous Israeli Prime Ministers Olmert and Barak, was reiterating why there’s no such thing as a one state solution if you believe, as he does, in the principle of a Jewish State.”

“[Kerry] was talking about the kind of future Israel wants and the kind of future both Israelis and Palestinians would want to envision. The only way to have two nations and two peoples living side by side in peace and security is through a two state solution. And without a two state solution, the level of prosperity and security the Israeli and Palestinian people deserve isn’t possible,” she added.

Kerry has been conducting more than a year of intensive shuttle diplomacy trying to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Earlier in April, he urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to prevent the negotiations from collapsing, saying it was regrettable that both sides have taken steps recently that are not helpful in promoting peace and ending the decades-long conflict between the two sides.

The “crime of apartheid” include “inhumane acts… committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime,” according to the 1998 Rome Statute.

Apartheid was insitutionalised from 1948 to 1994 in South Africa, and was a means of racial classification and segregration. (T/P09/E01).

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA).