Launching a new round of peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians last July, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry set a deadline for the two sides to reach a peace deal within nine months. Today, that deadline is passing with the sides seemingly no closer to resolving their long-running dispute. Israel suspended the negotiations last Thursday, after rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas announced that they would form a unity government in the coming weeks.
The move to form a unity government presented perhaps the final complication to the United States’ recent push for peace. Hamas refuses to recognize Israel and has been designated by the U.S. State Department as a foreign terrorist organization.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long insisted that he will not pursue peace talks with the Palestinian Authority (PA) if it is backed by Hamas, which he called a “terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel and denies the Holocaust” at a Cabinet meeting over the weekend.