Barack Obama

John Kerry may be gradually persuading enough Israeli right-wingers that a Palestinian state is worth striving for
Jan 11th 2014 | JERUSALEM

FEW believed that John Kerry, the American secretary of state, would manage to haul the Israelis and Palestinians back into the negotiating room, let alone get them to discuss anything of substance. Yet six months since talks began, he may be able to present, within weeks, a “framework agreement”, after which final details must be hammered out. Diplomats who had mocked his dogged prophetic conviction now sound shocked by his progress. Rejectionists on both sides who quietly presumed that the process would collapse under its own weight now express alarm.

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Mr Kerry’s methodical midwifery may be paying off. His team of 120, including four generals, has almost as great a command of detail as do the Israelis and Palestinians. “What matters is a settlement, not lots of settlements,” says Mr Kerry.

He hugs the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, a former firebrand who vilified Palestinians and was cordially detested by them in return, whereas his predecessor, Hillary Clinton, used to shun him. Mr Lieberman nowadays praises Mr Kerry for bringing peace closer than ever, and has turned the ten naysayers in his party’s parliamentary bloc into yes men. Yair Lapid, the finance minister, has come out strongly in favour, bringing onside his 19 parliamentarians, the second-biggest party in the 120-strong Knesset. Mr Kerry’s people have also courted the black-hatted Haredim, or ultra-Orthodox. All told, he has overseen a remarkable turnaround. After the election at the beginning of last year, a narrow majority in the Knesset would have shied from a negotiated two-state solution. Now, according to insiders, its members stand 85-35 or so in its favour.

That should give Mr Netanyahu room to move. But he is a party man, loth to leave the rejectionist Likud movement in which he was raised, whereas Mr Sharon, after deciding against the wishes of most of his fellow Likudniks to evacuate the Gaza Strip in 2005, simply set up a new party of his own. Mr Netanyahu remembers that his own coalition toppled him when he signed an agreement at Wye River in 1998 to withdraw from territory. In his own eyes he moved dangerously far four years ago, when, in a speech at Bar Ilan University, he flouted his party’s charter, which still promotes the vision of a Greater Israel, by embracing a two-state solution in principle.

http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21593478-john-kerry-may-be-gradually-persuading-enough-israeli-right-wingers

Love this freshwest, a great thread on SOS Kerry from the great state of Massachusetts.

I can't wait to watch that last speech of Obama's at the convention. It rocked.They are indeed friends~